COVID-19 deaths, hospitalizations on the decline
TAMPA, Fla. - Recent data from the Florida Department of Health shows the seven-day rolling average of hospitalizations for people 65 and older in Florida is 100 fewer now compared to the beginning of February.
The death rate for those 65 and older has an even steeper decline. The seven-day average number of deaths from COVID-19 at the beginning of February was 175. That number has decreased to 50 per week, according to the Florida Department of Health.
"We really want to protect the people who are most at risk for getting really sick and dying from this, and those are the people who are older, and in fact it’s pretty amazing how the level of mortality of this really relates so tightly to age," said Dr. Thomas Unnasch, an infectious disease researcher and public health professor at the University of South Florida.
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The reason for the declining hospitalization and death trend is because two-thirds of Florida's elderly population has been vaccinated, Unnasch says.
The age eligibility for the vaccine dropped to 50 on Monday, March 22, and even though it has only been a few days, Florida Department of Health data shows a slight decline in the hospitalization rate for ages 45 to 64: a seven-day average of 80 per day in the beginning of February to an average of 50 per day at the end of March.
The death rate is also slowly declining.
