TAMPA, Fla — A month into fall in Florida and infectious disease experts are closely monitoring the state's COVID-19 numbers.
With fewer restrictions in place, cooler temperatures and the thick of flu season on the horizon, a second wave of new coronavirus infections is expected.
“In reality, it's kind of the perfect storm,” Dr. Jill Roberts with USF Public Health said.
She says cases are slowly rising right now. With more than 750,000 cases reported, the state's daily percent positivity stands at 4.8 percent.
“One of the reasons we pick on Florida is because we have been historically one of the earliest to sort of release all those restrictions,” Roberts said. “We have the potential to prove everyone wrong and we can simply do that by continuing to do what we've been doing all along. We can continue to our masks and we can continue to social distance.”
Doctors say what happens in the next months is all dependent on human behavior. The models for COVID-19 in Florida, created by the College of Public Health at USF, show three different scenarios:
Model 1: Cases will go down and stay down if mask-wearing and social distancing continue.
Model 2: Everything stays how it is and cases continue to plateau.
Model 3: We act as the virus doesn't exist and cases spike because we let our guard down.
“It's this third scenario is one we should work together to prevent,” Dr. Marissa Levine said. The public health expert with USF Public Health says COVID-19 measures have to stay in place a little longer.
“I'm not here to scare anybody, I would say that the critical public health message is, we have to keep doing what we know works. If we stopped doing that, if we increase our mobility, and we take away our protections, then we are going to see a spike we've seen. We're seeing that happen in other places in the United States,” Levine said.
Doctors urge everyone to keep wearing their masks and social distancing until we find a COVID-19 vaccine.
Gov. Ron DeSantis says Florida won't shut down again even if infections rise. He wants the state to stay open and keep moving forward.
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