With many academics who tested positive for coronavirus on his return to Florida universities, Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized Thursday the suggestion that sending other young people to school is unsafe.
Not only is it very likely that scholars will contract the virus before returning to school or primary and secondary schools that have reopened throughout the state, but the number of young people who tested positive is remarkably low, he said.
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“You see the headlines that say, oh, 2,000 academics from the University of Alabama … tested positive and resulted in 60,000 people. In fact, I think it’s less than 2, 000,” he says.
“So the rate is lower than in the United States, yet it presents itself as if there was a major epidemic at the University of Alabama,” he said at a news convention in Tampa.
Continuing his opposite perorata to the media, he stated that the severity of the symptoms is not mentioned either.
“Especially for this age group, the vast majority of people who test positive on those college campuses show no symptoms and don’t end up getting sick,” he said. “I think it’s important. I think other people would like to know.
Although the main points of symptom severity are published, cases on school campuses are multiplying across the country, adding in Florida.
According to the knowledge published through the New York Times this week, at least 727 academics from the University of Central Florida tested positive for the virus. The Orlando school, with the largest student population in the state, has one of the infection numbers of any university in the country.
The University of Florida has 266Array, the University of South Florida is 220 and Florida State University is 68, the newspaper reported. Other state universities are under 51, he said.
While acknowledging that national figures are difficult to track and that it is difficult to compare schools because it reports them differently, the newspaper said cases are unlikely to be reported.
And school officials are involved in the academics possibly not sticking to social estrangement rules and other protective measures designed to curb the spread of the disease.
A weekend campus party led Florida State University to ban meetings of more than 10 people, teams of 50 people are allowed under regulations in Leon County and others outdoors in South Florida.
“People across the country are waiting for campuses like ours to fail,” Amy Hecht, vice president of student affairs, wrote in an email to academics on Wednesday. “But I hope that USF academics will be informed of the mistakes of last weekend and live up to the occasion.”
Palm Beach County health director Alina Alonso said she expects cases to occur after college resumes. Once the holidays begin and the beer sinks, the inhibitions disappear and the mask is removed, he told county commissioners at a recent meeting.
While only 8 other people under the age of 18 died from COVID-19 in Florida, 3,357 sought remedied in emergency rooms and 620 were hospitalized, according to state fitness officials.
And although DeSantis indicated that the percentage of young people who tested positive for the virus is lower than that of the general population, this is not the case in Florida.
Of the 326,328 young people under the age of 18 who have been screened since the start of the pandemic, 15% tested positive for the virus, according to the Florida Department of Health.
By comparison, of the 4.5 million statewide, 13.4% positive.
On Thursday, the positivity rate, which shows the prevalence of the virus, rose slightly.
Health experts estimate that the rate should remain consistently below 5% before significant steps can be taken to combat the spread of the disease. Also, pediatricians say it’s consistently less than 5% before young people return to school.
Of the approximately 59,000 tests reported statewide on Thursday, 6.41% were positive. In Palm Beach County, 5.22% of the approximately 3,400 tests reported were positive.
Over the next week, the state’s positivity rate averaged 6.45% and the county average of 4.64%.
DeSantis welcomed the downward trend and said it is one of several measures that offer encouraging symptoms that the state is escaping the worst phase of the pandemic.
The number of cases in Florida increased to 3,269 on Thursday, bringing the total number of cases in the state to 611,991, according to the state health branch.
139 more deaths were reported, raising the death toll in the state to 11,011, 143 non-residents who died in Florida.
Palm Beach County reflected state trends. With 182 new cases identified, 41,195 others have been diagnosed with a highly infectious respiratory disease since the start of the pandemic in March.
A further 17 deaths were reported, bringing the county death toll to 1,111.
The deaths, which may have occurred a few weeks ago due to reporting delays, included two men, aged 55 and 56. The rest were over 68 years old, an organization of maximum age vulnerable to the fatal virus.
The death toll has been since last Thursday when 17 were also reported. But those numbers may vary due to reporting delays.
In the following week, an average of 8 deaths per day has been reported.
The number of new cases reported in the state and county is below the reported daily average during the following week.
On average, the state reported 3,341 new cases per day and the county reported an average of 190.
For the first time since July 25, Florida no longer hosts the second highest number of coronavirus cases in the country, according to a coronavirus follow-up conducted through Johns Hopkins University.
Florida fell to third place, Texas and California, after cases in the lone star state continued to rise in recent days, while Florida’s continued.
But Texas’ position at the time of waiting is fragile. By Thursday morning, he had reported about 2,000 more cases than Florida on Wednesday. With 687,004 cases shown, California leads the country. It is the most populous state in the country, followed by Texas and then Florida.
But DeSantis has not focused on the growing number of cases in Florida. Instead, he pointed out the number of other people hospitalized for COVID-19 treatment.
On Thursday, the number of patients across the state continued to decline. Another 4,294 people were hospitalized Thursday morning, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration.
Although the numbers replace other people who are admitted and discharged from the hospital, that is 201 patients less than the number of patients hospitalized on Wednesday morning.
In Palm Beach County, another 238 people were hospitalized to remedy COVID-19. That’s 12 less than Wednesday morning’s count.
“These are trends,” DeSantis said at the press conference. “I think they are sustainable at least in the near future.”
But, he said, the key is that the decline came when theme parks and businesses were allowed to reopen.
“Keeping society in position is a technique that has served us well and we will continue to do so,” he said.
Sending other youth to school is part of this effort. And, he insisted, young people of all ages tested positive for the virus, this can be done safely.
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