What’s the COVID risk in Miami and the rest of Florida? Here’s how to check

Florida saw an increase of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations leading into the holidays, and while hospitals say it isn’t as bad as previous surges, some counties, including Miami-Dade, are once again considered to be high risk for the disease.

This is according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which uses data on hospitalizations and cases to determine whether a county has a low, medium or high risk of COVID transmission. The agency uses this risk level to give guidance on whether people should wear a mask or not.

As of Friday, 15 of Florida’s 67 counties, including Miami-Dade, are considered high risk. The CDC says 46 Florida counties, including Broward, Monroe, Palm Beach and Manatee, are medium risk and eight counties are low risk.

What does this say about the COVID situation in Florida?

Here’s what to know:

What does high, medium, low COVID risk level mean?

Depending on the risk level of your county, the mask guidance varies:

▪ If you live in a high-risk county like Miami-Dade, the CDC is recommending you wear a high-quality mask or respirator. The public health agency is also recommending that people considered to be “at risk” for getting very sick avoid non-essential indoor activities in public.

▪ If you live in a medium-risk county like Broward, Monroe, Manatee and Palm Beach, the CDC is recommending anyone considered to be at high risk of severe illness wear a high-quality mask or respirator when indoors in public.

▪ If you live in a low-risk county like Alachua, the CDC is recommending people who are considered to be high risk for severe illness speak with their doctor on whether they should wear a mask or take other precautions.

The CDC is also recommending people stay up-to-date with their COVID vaccination, including the bivalent booster, regardless of what risk level their county is in. To check your county’s risk level, visit cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/covid-by-county.html

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What does this mean for Florida’s COVID situation?

Cases, hospitalizations and deaths have been some of the key indicators that officials have used to gauge the COVID-19 situation in Florida and the rest of the United States, though they do have some limitations.

Case counts, for example, can help give people a sense of how much the virus is spreading, though the figure is likely an undercount because it doesn’t include positive results from at-home testing.

This is why experts like Jason Salemi, a University of South Florida epidemiologist, also look at wastewater data, which can help indicate how much virus spread there is in a community. And based on the most recent data, four of Florida’s biggest counties — Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Orange and Hillsborough counties — have seen increases over the past couple of weeks, he said.

“Where we are is better than we have been at other points in the pandemic during this period of time in the calendar year, but we are starting to see an increase and we’ve got a brand new variant that is very quickly becoming dominant that we don’t really know a lot about yet,” said Salemi, who has maintained a detailed COVID-19 dashboard throughout the pandemic.

While Florida has seen an increase in cases and hospitalizations, it’s still much lower then previous surges. On Jan. 3, for example, there were 2,800 adults hospitalized in the state with confirmed COVID compared to 17,000 during the delta surge in the summer of 2021, he said.

“We’re six times lower than our peak ... so they are increasing but they are lower than what we were in July ... and they are dramatically lower than previous waves in the state,” Salemi said.

As of Thursday, the state added an average of 3,320 cases, marking the first dip in weekly new cases since late November, according to Miami Herald calculations of CDC data.

Who is most at risk?

While more variants keep getting added to the world’s COVID alphabet soup — the newest is XBB.1.5 variant, which is now the second-most dominant strain in the country — seniors 65 and older, people with certain medical conditions or who are immunocompromised remain most at risk for severe COVID illness.

And while hospitalizations have increased for every age group, the group most at risk for severe illness continues to be seniors, said Salemi. While COVID-19 treatments, like Paxlovid, are now readily available to help combat the illness, health experts say vaccination still remains one of the most effective ways to reduce a person’s risk for hospitalization.

However, the country has struggled to get people boosted with Pfizer and Moderna’s bivalent COVID vaccine, which was designed to combat the original strain of COVID and the more contagious omicron variant. The CDC says about 15.4% of people 5 and older in the U.S. have received the updated booster. About 38% of seniors 65 and older have received the updated booster.

While it’s possible cases will increase as the new variant takes hold, Salemi says a lot of it will depend on how people behave.

“How much we’re taking advantage of vaccination, how much are we being strategic with our use of antigen testing, how often are we, when we have symptoms, staying at home and not going into work or school and increasing the likelihood that we’re infecting others, not just COVID, but with something else?” he said.