Polk County's new COVID infections rise, but positivity rate dips slightly in latest report

Amid worldwide concerns about the spread of the omicron variant, Polk County saw a small increase in new COVID-19 infections and a decline in positive test results.

Those mixed indicators emerged from Friday’s weekly update issued by the Florida Department of Health.

The state agency reported 339 new cases for Polk County, an increase of 12.6% from the previous report. The positivity rate for testing was 2.7%, down from 2.9% in the last update.

An early glimpse of omicron's threat: High transmission likely, but vaccines provide hope

Vaccinations in Florida: More Floridians head to the COVID vaccination clinics as omicron looms

More: Polk State College cancels $1.2 million in student debt using federal COVID relief money

It wasn’t clear how the Thanksgiving holiday might have affected the numbers. The Department of Health did not issue its typical Friday report on Nov. 26 but posted an update Tuesday with the previous week’s figures.

New infections for Polk County jumped in mid-November after 10 weeks of steady, sometimes dramatic reductions. But the numbers declined again before the latest relatively small rise.

At 2.7%, Polk County’s positivity rate remains well below the 10% target set by the Florida Department of Health for controlling transmission. The World Health Organization sets 5% as the target maximum.

Polk’s positivity rate soared to 28.9% in mid-August, at the peak of the resurgence spawned by spread of the delta variant.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has moved Polk County’s transmission risk back up to “substantial” after it had dropped to “moderate” two weeks earlier. The CDC reported 52.84 cases per 100,000 residents for Polk County as of Friday, just above the threshold of 50 cases for the “substantial” label.

The Florida Department of Health, though, lists Polk County at 47.1 cases per 100,000 residents.

Polk’s transmission risk remained “high” for much of the summer, when Polk County and Florida reached record levels for weekly infections and positivity rates.

The state agency has registered 130,166 confirmed infections in Polk County since it began tracking cases.

A report from 24/7 Wall St. rated Polk County 45th out of 383 metro areas with available data for cumulative infections. As of Tuesday, Polk County had recorded 18,946.3 confirmed cases per 100,000 residents, compared to the national rate of 14,848.4 cases per 100,000, 24/7 Wall St. reported.

Weekly vaccinations in Polk County rose slightly. The Department of Health recorded 3,099 vaccinations of local residents in Friday’s update, up 0.9% from the previous report.

Statewide, the agency reported 497,854 new vaccinations, an increase of 17.6% from the previous update.

Of the weekly vaccinations in Florida, 61.9% were booster shots – additional doses beyond the original two-dose regimen of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Another 20.3% were first doses, and 17.8% were completed series of shots.

The CDC has recommended booster doses for everyone 18 and older at least six months after a first regimen of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines and at least two months after a first Johnson & Johnson shot. About 43 million Americans have received booster doses, the CDC reported.

In Polk County, 62% of eligible residents have received at least one dose, the state agency reported. Polk ranks 26th out of Florida’s 67 counties for its vaccination rate, according to a website maintained by Jason Salemi, an associate professor of epidemiology for the USF Health College of Public Health.

The CDC website on Friday listed 60.9% of Polk County residents age 12 and older as fully vaccinated, an increase of 0.8 percentage points from the week before.

Children ages 5 through 11 became eligible for immunizations in early November. As of Friday, about 7% of Polk County children in that age group had received at least one vaccine dose, the Florida Department of Health in Polk County reported.

That ranked the county behind the statewide vaccination level of 9% for children ages 5 through 11.

The CDC reported 61 new hospital admissions for COVID in Polk County for the week ending Friday. The CDC registered 11 COVID-related deaths for the county, four fewer than the previous week.

Polk County had accumulated 2,504 deaths through Nov. 25, according to Pub Info Salemi’s site. The Florida Department of Health stopped reporting deaths at the county level in June.

The Department of Health registered another 153 COVID-related deaths statewide. Deaths are a lagging indicator in official reports, and the department doesn’t say when the deaths occurred.

The agency lists Florida’s cumulative death toll from COVID-19 at 61,701.

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: COVID update: Polk County has mixed numbers