ORLANDO, Fla. — As a new strain of COVID-19′s omicron variant dominates the virus in Florida, the state’s statistics are showing mixed signals, leaving uncertainty about what’s to come for the remainder of the summer.
The number of Florida hospital patients who have COVID-19 is its highest since mid-February, at 4,172 as of Thursday.
And even as Central Florida’s testing positivity rates have remained relatively stable over the past two weeks, Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Lake all have rates over 20% and community levels remain in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s “high” category.
Epidemiologists say BA.5 may be the worst strain yet, mostly because is better at evading prior immunity than previous strains and increasing rapidly.
Hospitalizations and positivity rates are the most reliable method of determining community levels. The number of new cases, once the most important measure, is essentially meaningless because of the number of people testing at home and not reporting positive test results or not testing at all despite having symptoms.
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