ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — In recent days, new COVID-19 cases have started to climb in the Tampa Bay area and across the state.
The increase comes as the state has now been in the process of reopening businesses for several weeks after stay-at-home orders were lifted.
Statewide, new cases have increased 66 percent in the past two weeks, according to covidexitstrategy.org.
So how concerned should we be and what does this increase potentially tell us?
"COVID is not over,” says Dr. Marissa Levine, with USF Public Health. “It is here with us—these numbers emphasize the fact it's still here with us.”
While new cases are increasing so, too, is testing. The state’s percent positive rate for tests has remained fairly steady.
But Levine says those aren’t necessarily our best indicators.
“We also have to watch hospitalizations and then, over a longer period of time, the deaths,” she said, but those numbers are delayed.
"It's a few weeks out from Memorial Day, we've had protests now, we really have to watch carefully over these coming weeks for those other indicators, too, and look at the whole picture."
Does this increase potentially signal the start of a second wave?
Levine says she’s not sure we ever finished the first wave.
“I think it’s too soon to say,” she said. “We're at a place where it looks like one person is, on average, transmitting it to one other person and that's good. A second wave would mean we're in a situation where transmission is taking off and one person is spreading it to more than two or three."
Levine says now is not the time to relax hygiene and health guidelines. She says we must still be serious about practicing social distancing and keeping groups small, covering our faces when we can’t be far apart from others, and washing our hands regularly.
“We don’t have to lock up again,” she said. “But if we let our guard down completely there’s a good chance it could take off.”
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