Related
MIAMI (WSVN) - Coronavirus-related deaths in the U.S. have topped 3,000, with 85 in Florida, and health officials are predicting when the country can expect to see a peak number of virus cases.
U.S. officials have warned the virus could kill well over 100,000 Americans, and doctors and data analysts fear Florida could be hit hard as a result of the pandemic.
Dr. Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist from the University of Washington, said everyone in the U.S. must do their part to flatten the curve.
“We’re very powerful,” he said. “In order to control this epidemic, if we stay all of us at home, yes, we can.”
Mokdad is part of the university’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. His projection showed the peak of the pandemic in America will be mid-April and will kill 83,967 in the country.
In Florida, the model projects 5,568 will lose their lives, and the peak will be later, on May 3, assuming a statewide stay-at-home order will be put in place.
On Monday, Mokdad said he spoke to Florida’s Surgeon General and suggested the state to close non-essential businesses. In his model, when Florida hits the peak, 1,992 intensive care unit beds will be needed. However, the state is projected to be short by 297 ICU beds. Mokdad added that Florida’s urban areas, like South Florida, will be hit the hardest.
“I tried to convince him that when a governor says stay at home, people tend to listen more,” Mokdad said. “I would expect Miami more impacted. It’s more crowded than any other part in the state.”
Another model governments are using to make decisions comes from COVIDactnow.org. The website’s model projects a potential later peak in Florida near mid-May.
“There’s a lot of concern about Florida,” website spokesperson Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins said. “Florida and maybe COVID not being taken as seriously as it’s been taken in other places.”
The COVID Act Now model shows massive differences in the number of deaths in Florida depending on how the state responds. If there is a three-month lockdown, like there was in China, there would be less than a thousand deaths in Florida, but even with a three-month shelter-in-place order, COVID Act Now projects the death toll in Florida could still be in the thousands.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” Kreiss-Tomkins said. “It’s basically if there’s not a stay-at-home, shelter-at-home kind of intervention, the Florida healthcare system is going to experience three [times] or five [times] what we are starting to see in New York City and Northern Italy.”
Both of the aforementioned models are trying to produce numbers for counties, and curve projections could be available within the next few days for Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
Copyright 2024 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.