ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — It's been almost two weeks since Florida was, on average, reporting more than 2,000 new COVID-19 infections every single day. It's even lower than that right now.
Data produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as provided by the state Department of Health appear to show Florida is, yet again, in a bit of cooling-off period at this point in the pandemic. The daily case average is nowhere near in excess of 20,000 as seen earlier this summer and far off from January's peak of 15,000 daily cases.
Health experts have applauded this recent trend but not what it took to get here. The highly transmissible delta variant hit the state hard early in the summer, leading to greater infections, hospitalizations and deaths.
CDC data shows the vast majority of those who end up in the hospital are unvaccinated — 12 times higher in unvaccinated persons than those who received a COVID-19 shot.
"When you look at the numbers in Florida, we’re in such a better place than we were a couple of weeks ago," Dr. Jason Salemi, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida, said in an earlier interview. "It’s just unfortunate so many people got infected, hospitalized, so many lost their lives to achieve this level of immunity."
Regardless, the early impact of the delta variant, increased vaccine coverage and more widespread immunity among those who fell ill with the virus all are reasons health experts say are contributing to Florida's lower COVID caseload.
The U.S. as a whole has trended downward in recent weeks, as well, but has seemed to have since hit a plateau, according to a New York Times analysis of CDC data. States seeing a big increase include New Mexico, Nebraska, California and Arizona.
Globally, the seven-day average of new COVID cases has ticked upward amid outbreaks in Russia and parts of Europe, the Times shows.