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Florida COVID-19 Reality Check – November 10th, 2021
Bottom Line: The news continues to improve in Florida. We entered this week averaging only 1,538 new daily cases of COVID-19 over the past week. The trend is the lowest since June 21st and is within 100 daily cases of reaching the lowest levels since June of 2020. We’ve experienced a 93% decline in average cases from peak levels. This stands in contrast to the country as a whole which has begun to see an uptick in cases over the past couple of weeks. Florida’s now had the fewest population adjusted cases in the country for three consecutive weeks. The better news looks likely to continue.
The Mayo Clinic’s tracker and projection tool has been highly accurate throughout the pandemic. Looking at the 14-day projections, the news looking out over the next couple of weeks remains the best it’s been since the Delta variants hit the scene. They provide three different models. What they call the “lower bound” projection, or best-case scenario, the middle, or average projection and an upper bound, or worst-case scenario. I’ll work backwards from the worst-case to the best. With new cases currently at three-month lows, here’s what’s anticipated over the next couple of weeks.
Under the worst-case projection from the Mayo Clinic, Florida’s cases would increase by 29% from where we are today, leaving the state pacing around 2,000 new cases daily in two weeks. The average projection has Florida seeing a 29% decrease in cases to around 1,100 daily cases. The best-case scenario continues to provide much better news. Under that scenario we’d see a decline in cases to around the earliest weeks of the pandemic with a decline of 57% over the next two weeks leaving us with around 700 daily cases.
Many experts expect a winter surge in cases, so perhaps we’re not out of the woods with the pandemic yet, however the odds generally remain in our favor for continued improvement for at least the next couple of weeks. And it remains best to be in Florida for any number of reasons, including currently having the fewest relative COVID-19 cases in the country.