Fall officially starts today and with that, Florida’s left the summer surge of COVID-19 cases behind. New COVID-19 cases statewide totaled 6,904 on Tuesday, an improvement of about 4,500 cases over the prior week dropping Florida’s weekly trend to cases to the lowest level in exactly two months. COVID-19 hospitalizations dropped by 358 patients, leaving 8,130 patients hospitalized with the virus.
In other news, Governor DeSantis announced the state’s new surgeon general will be Joseph Ladapo. Dr. Ladapo most recently has worked as a UCLA researcher and during Tuesday’s press conference he said, "Florida will completely reject fear as a way of making policies in public health. Fear (has been) unfortunately a centerpiece of health policy in the United States ever since the beginning of the pandemic and it’s over here. Expiration date: it’s done." Ladapo rejects lockdowns and mandates for vaccines and masks as a matter of public policy.
DeSantis also announced new data aggregated by the Florida Department of Health and Florida Hospital Association showing Monoclonal Antibody treatments have reduced hospitalizations by 70% since the statewide rollout. Florida’s led the country in the treatments as they became a priority of the governor during the state’s summer surge of cases. The Biden administration recently announced they’d no longer allow the state to directly contract with Regeneron for the treatments, reducing the number of treatments available to the state by approximately half.