TAMPA, Fla. — Florida has seen positive trends in the state's coronavirus data over the past few weeks, but infectious disease experts say we're not out of the woods yet.
"Our reports (are) a little unusual. It has some good news and some bad news in it," Dr. Jill Roberts with the USF Public Health said.
After another day of looking at the state's coronavirus report, Roberts says we can all be optimistic. Case numbers are relatively low and have been dropping for several days.
The bad news? COVID-19 testing is down and the infection rate and the number of people in the hospital is up. After three consecutive days of a rate 5 percent or below, which is where we want to be to reopen, it's now above 7 percent. That bumps up the 14-day average to about 11 percent.
"Those pieces of data, they don't make sense together, our case numbers went down, but our hospitalization numbers went up, and then our testing is down. We want things to be really consistent to have some faith in the data," Roberts said.
Roberts says the next few days should show a trend and will tell us why the state's numbers seem to be off. What she does know right now is it still isn't the right time to fully reopen the state.
"COVID didn't disappear. We still see cases. We still see hospitalizations. We still see deaths. If we were to take away all the measures that we put in place already, we would bounce right back to where we were before," Roberts said.
So while kids go back to schools, more people come to Florida for Labor Day and the flu season starts, Roberts says safety measures are even more crucial to get the state's numbers heading in the right direction.
"I've seen a lot of younger people, college students, high school students gathering in areas and not wearing those masks. Not taking the precautions. That's obviously the opposite of what I want to see," Roberts said. "I knew pandemic fatigue was coming. We knew it was, but that, you know, that can't comfort you at nighttime when one of your parents dies.
"It just can't, so I'm worried."
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