- April 22, 2024
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by: Brent Woronoff
Contributing Writer
While Florida’s COVID-19 numbers have been spiking in recent days, Flagler County has not seen a similar surge, county health officials say.
At June 17’s final Palm Coast Virtual Town Hall on Covid Response, Bob Snyder, the Flagler administrator for the Florida Department of Health, reported 214 total positive cases in the county, seven more than the previous week. Of those, 172 were Palm Coast residents.
By contrast, Wednesday marked the fourth time since Saturday that new cases throughout the state exceeded 2,000.
While the percent of positive cases in Florida over the previous 14 days spiked from 3.49% on June 3 to 10.4% on June 16, Flagler County was still below 1% during that period, Snyder said.
Meanwhile, testing in the county has surpassed goals. The county’s goal was to test 4% of Flagler County’s residents by the end of June, Snyder said, and by Wednesday morning, they’ve received 6,883 lab results.
“So far we’ve tested 6.3% of our population,” he said.
Of 3,018 COVID-19 related deaths in the state according to the Florida Department of Health, five were in the county.
Over the last two weeks, the county tested 1,500 residents and staff at 72 congregate facilities — including nursing homes, assisted living facilities and group homes — with all results negative, Snyder said. He said two staff members that tested positive previously have since recovered.
Snyder said emergency room visits for flu-like symptoms and COVID-like symptoms continue to be “downward and stable,” and there is just one COVID-related hospital admission in the county.
“We continue to trend in the right direction and at the same time we’re succeeding in opening up our businesses and our economy,” Snyder said.
Snyder said the health department’s three priorities — diagnostic testing, positive case investigations and contact tracing and a focus on long-term care facilities — are all on target.
But he added that local officials are concerned about the virus’ resurgence in 26 states including Florida.
“This is due to increased testing, outbreaks in nursing homes and agricultural communities such as migrant farm worker camps and an overall uptick in mobility of all us as the state reopens,” Snyder said.
He said to continue to win locally in squelching the spread of the virus, residents need to continue to practice social distancing and effective hand hygiene and wear facial masks. He said the Health Department will continue to investigate positive cases and perform contact tracing.
At last week’s Virtual Town Hall, officials announced they had 67,000 cloth masks to give away. Snyder said within five working days 50,000 masks have been passed out and more will be ordered.
Drive-up testing continues at the Daytona State College Flagler/Palm Coast campus and testing continues at the health department and other locations in the community, he said.
Snyder said residents who believe they could have been exposed to the virus can call Emergency Services at 386-313-4200, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday to make an appointment.
Flagler County Emergency Management Director Jonathan Lord said he believes the reason the county’s numbers are lower than the state averages are because residents are wearing masks and social distancing.
“I also believe if we let off the gas pedal with that, we will join the rest of the state, seeing this astronomical rise in new cases,” he said.
