Polk's COVID positivity rate slips below 10% for first time since May

Gary White, The Ledger
·2 min read

Polk County’s positivity rate for COVID-19 testing has sunk below 10% for the first time since early May.

The rate stood at 9% in Friday’s biweekly update from the Florida Department of Health. The rate, based on test results submitted to the department, had last been under 10% in the report of May 6, when it was listed as 8.3%.

The positivity rate for Polk County had remained above 20% from June until late August. It fell to 17.1% in the report from Aug. 26 and dropped to 11.3% two weeks later.

The figures don’t include presumed infections detected through home testing.

The state disclosed 688 new infections for Polk County for the week of Sept. 16-22, a decline of 31.6% from two weeks earlier.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has downgraded Polk County’s community levels of COVID-19 from high to medium. The county had been rated at a high level for weeks.

The CDC downgraded Polk's level of community spread for COVID from high to medium this week after the positivity rate fell to 9%.
The CDC downgraded Polk's level of community spread for COVID from high to medium this week after the positivity rate fell to 9%.

Polk was one of 28 Florida counties in the medium category as of Friday afternoon. The CDC listed another 29 as having low community levels, while 10 remained in the high category.

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The CDC reported 13 COVID-related deaths in Polk County for the week ending Wednesday. That signaled an increase of 44% from the previous seven-day period.

Deaths are a lagging indicator, and there can be long delays in having deaths officially recorded.

The Florida Department of Health does not disclose deaths by county. Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida, has analyzed death records and measured 2,849 COVID-related deaths for Polk County through July.

Statewide, the positivity rate was 8.4% in Friday’s report, compared with to 12.4% two weeks earlier. The Department of Health registered 17,438 new infections, marking a decrease of 39.4% from the Sept. 9 report.

The agency disclosed 753 new deaths in Friday’s report, bringing Florida’s cumulative death toll to 81,139.

The CDC estimated 76 admissions of patients positive for COVID in Polk County in the week ending Tuesday, down 16.7% from the previous seven-day period. Only 3.6% of staffed, in-patient beds at county hospitals were occupied by COVID-positive patients, according to the CDC dashboard.

Among Polk County residents age 5 and older, 72.1% have received at least one dose of vaccine, CDC figures show. The agency listed 62.2% of residents as fully vaccinated and 40.9% as having received a first booster dose.

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: Polk County's COVID community spread downgraded to medium by CDC