The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has moved Broward County’s COVID risk level up to “moderate.”
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that the higher level is a result of the county’s positivity rate rising to 16.5% and nine new COVID hospital admissions each day per 100,000 people.
Broward joins Miami-Dade as the only two counties in Florida with moderate risk levels rather than low.
Dr. Aileen Marty, an infectious diseases specialist at Florida International University, said because of immunity from infection and vaccination, hospitalizations from the new subvariant likely will be minimal.
On Friday, about only about 2.6% of Florida’s hospital beds were occupied with COVID patients.
Click here to read more on this story from news partner The South Florida Sun Sentinel.
However, that was nearly 20 percent increase over the previous week, according to data posted online by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The data showed that 1,560 inpatients had COVID, up from 1,303 a week earlier.
Also, the number of COVID patients in intensive care units increased from 103 last week to 131 in Friday’s count.
Florida in recent weeks has seen a steady increase in patients with COVID, though the numbers remain far lower than early in the year, when the highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus swept across the state.
Information from News Service of Florida was used in this report.
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