Trends in COVID-19 cases are finally starting to diverge in California, which loves confinement, and in Florida open all day, data reveal.
California is now seeing about half of the new COVID-19 cases a day compared to Florida, an analysis by the Financial Times of Johns Hopkins University data.
On Wednesday, California saw 5,750 new cases – or about 14 per 100,000 people in the population – and 1,084 deaths, with a positive test rate of 3.45 percent.
In Florida, the test’s positivity rate was almost double, 6.76%, according to data from the COVID Screening Project. The state saw 7,128 new cases – almost 27 per capita – and 127 additional deaths.
Parallel trends between the two states last month left public health experts like Biden adviser Jeff Zients scratching his head about how a state that has implemented some of the most rigid and long-lasting measures in the country (California) could not be doing better than the Florida, which never mandate to mask tax.
Experts say the blockages are probably not as useful now as they were at the beginning of the pandemic, but the new data suggests that California has an advantage over Florida.
New cases of COVID-19 in California (blue) began to decline more sharply than in Florida (green) in late January. The West Coast state saw about 14 new infections per capita on Wednesday, compared with 27 per capita in Florida
On January 1, with the increase in post-Thanksgiving cases Covid still flooding the United States and the second post-holiday wave starting to fall, California was seeing almost twice as many cases as Florida.
On the first day of 2021, California reported about 90 new coronavirus infections per capita per day, compared with 49 in Florida.
California home applications had just been renewed “indefinitely” on December 29, effectively arresting millions of people in Southern California.
Meanwhile, Florida was more or less doing business normally. In fact, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has extended an executive order that prevented local governments in his state from implementing any restrictions that could take residents out of work or close deals.
According to a Wallethub analysis, Florida has the sixth most relaxed COVID-19 constraint in the country. By their metrics, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Iowa and Arkansas have less restrictions on things like dining and wearing masks.
However, it was doing better than California – for a moment.
New cases in California and Florida continue to decline, as they have been since the beginning of January, but the reduction in the state of the West Coast is far surpassing that of the State of the Sun.
Since February 10, new cases per capita in California have halved, from 29 per 100,000 people to 14, on Wednesday.
Florida was slower to contain COVID-19.
Yesterday, the state registered 27 new cases per capita, compared to 35 on February 10.
It is still a considerable drop – 23% – but it is certainly not so sharp.
The change came at the end of last month. Per capita cases were consistently lower and declined in Florida, but those in California were in a real free fall (although the decline also slowed somewhat there).
Suddenly, daily case rates in California have dropped below those in Florida, and the gap is widening.
On January 25, Governor Newsom suspended home stay orders that were in effect for Southern California.
For the time being, the drop in cases is still sharp and sustained. Cases also continue to fall in Florida.
But both states face a potential reversal.
Florida has more cases of the UK’s B117 ‘supercover’ variant than any other state in the country, with 489.
California has less than half that number, but has the second highest number of cases of B117 in the US, with 204.
Renowned researcher Fred Hutchinson, Dr. Trevor Bedford, said last week that the two states would be the only ones to assist as predictors of how the variants could affect the path of the pandemic in the US more broadly.
And California has a new problem: a local variant that experts say will be responsible for 90% of cases in the state next month and that a small set of data suggests could be more deadly.
