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If you’ve been looking for better news regarding COVID, I’ve got it for you. Actually, this is the third straight week we’ve had good news in Florida. But like any projection, it takes a little time for the results to be realized. What has been realized is an improvement of greater than 8,000 fewer daily COVID-19 cases over the past two weeks. And the better news is set to keep on coming. While there were concerns that Labor Day get-togethers would lead to yet another surge in new cases, the early returns haven’t shown any evidence of that being the case nor do the projections reflect us heading backward from here.
During the summer surge, I cited the Mayo Clinic’s tracker and projection tool weekly for the spread of COVID-19 cases in Florida as it’s been highly accurate. That was true on the way up and it’s held true on the way down. Using the Mayo Clinic’s 14-day projections, the news remains the best it’s been since the Delta variant hit the scene. They provide three different models. What they call the “lower bound” projection, or best-case scenario, the middle, or average projection and an upper bound, or worst-case scenario. I’ll work backward from the worst-case to the best.
This week, even the worst-case news is good news. Under the worst-case projection from the Mayo Clinic, Florida’s cases would decline by 31% from where we are today reaching a level of about 7,900 daily new cases in two weeks. That’s the worst-case and is a huge improvement over just a week ago. Speaking of improvement. The average projection has Florida seeing a 52% decrease in cases to around 5,500 daily cases over the next two weeks. The best-case scenario is much better news. Under that scenario, cases are expected to decline by 68% over the next two weeks leaving us with around 3,700 daily cases.
It’s clear that not only has Florida put the summer surge in COVID-19 cases behind it but it's set to continue to see rapid improvement from where we are today under even the worst-case scenario. That's reason once again to be optimistic about Florida’s outlook in this pandemic and it appears that just as Florida led with the Delta surge in this country, we’re going to be the first to mostly put it behind us as well.