Tallahassee among top 12 COVID-19 'red zones' in Florida; report says more restrictions needed

Tallahassee Democrat

Tallahassee is one of 12 Florida metro areas identified as COVID-19 "red zones" where cases and positive tests are spiking the highest, according to a leaked White House document recommending more stringent guidelines to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

And Leon County is one of the top 12 counties considered “at risk” because its numbers are close to the red zone thresholds.

The previously unpublished report by the White House Coronavirus Task Force was obtained by the Center for Public Integrity and originally released to the public Thursday.

More:Read the full leaked report from the White House Coronavirus task force

It identified Florida as one of 18 states in the red zone for COVID-19 cases, meaning they had more than 100 new cases per 100,000 last week. It also said Florida is among the 11 states in the “red zone” for test positivity, meaning its test positivity rate is more than 10%.

Task force recommendations for states and communities in the red zone include requiring masks to be worn in public in counties with rising positive diagnostic test rates, closing bars and gyms, limiting indoor dining to 25%, increasing outdoor dining opportunities, and limiting social gatherings to 10 or fewer people.

Of all the recommendations listed, only one has been implemented locally — a countywide requirement enacted by the Leon County Commission June 25 that people entering local businesses wear masks.

Back story:

Florida had 308 cases per 100,000 last week, nearly three times the national average of 119 per 100,000, it said. Its positivity rate for the week was 12.65%.

The news comes as Florida continued to record a surge in cases and deaths.

According to the Department of Health, 11,466 new cases were reported, bringing the total to 327,241, with a positivity rate of 11.45% for the day. The state reported 128 deaths related to COVID-19, bringing the state death toll to 4,805.

The seven-day average for state deaths is 100.7.

The White House task force report also includes city and county level data for each state. The top three of the 48 counties in the red zone are Broward, Miami-Dade and Hillsborough, which account for 40.7 percent of all cases. Other top 12 Red Zone counties include Orange, Duval (where the Republican National Committee is planning its big convention celebration for President Trump), Palm Beach, Pinellas, Lee, Polk, Pasco, Collier, and Seminole.

“Florida is seeing broad community spread in many counties and metros,” the report said.

Tallahassee is ranked among the top 12 of 22 Florida "metro areas" that are in the red zone, meaning it reported both new cases over 100 per 100,000 and over 10 percent test positivity in the last week. The City of Tallahassee reported 328 new positive cases per 100,000 since last Thursday, according to data from the Florida Department of Health.

The report identified metro areas as core-based statistical areas, a federal Office of Management and Budget designation for an area anchored by a city of 10,000 or more people and adjacent counties tied socioeconomically to the urban center.

The top 12 metropolitan areas were chosen based on the highest number of cases over the last three weeks. Other Top 12 cities include Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Jacksonville, Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Lakeland-Winter Haven, Pensacola, Naples-Marco Island, Port St. Lucie and the Daytona-Deltona-Ormond Beach.

The Tallahassee metro area is a four-county region of nearly 390,000 people in Leon, Gadsden, Wakulla and Jefferson counties.

Leon County was among 17 counties in the yellow zone, which means it reported between 10-100 new cases of COVID-19 and had a diagnostic testing rate between 5-10 percent, or one of those two conditions.

The task force recommended continued scaling up of testing and messaging about social distancing, moving to community-led neighborhood testing and testing of multi-generational households, and immediately testing anyone involved in multi-household July 4 celebrations.

Other recommendations included instituting weekly testing of all workers in assisted living and long-term care facilities and require them all to wear masks. It also recommends ensuring that business retailers and personal service providers wear masks and enable social distancing.

The Center for Public Integrity also reported that task force member Dr. Deborah Birx said during a July 8 news conference that Arizona, California, Florida and Texas “were among the states the task force was monitoring carefully and that ‘a series of other states’ were also in the red zone and should consider limiting gatherings."

Birx told a reporter for the center that the report was updated weekly and sent to governors, but Gov. Ron DeSantis has never mentioned the report in his nearly daily press briefings.

DeSantis and his team did not respond for comment on the leaked report.

The governor has refused to order a statewide mask order, leaving it up to counties and cities to decide what’s best for their communities. Except for shutting bars and nightclubs back down, the governor has also balked at reversing the opening of restaurants and other businesses.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, another Republican running a Red Zone state, issued an order banning local governments from issuing mask mandates.

“In May, the World Health Organization recommended that governments make sure test positivity rates were at 5 percent or lower for 14 days before reopening. A COVID-19 tracker from Johns Hopkins University shows that 33 states were above that recommended positivity as of July 16,” the Center for Public Integrity reported.

“If the test positivity rate is above 10 percent, that means we’re not doing a good job mitigating the outbreak,” Jessica Malaty Rivera, science communication lead at the COVID Tracking Project, told the nonprofit government watchdog group. “Ideally we want the test positivity rate to be below 3 percent, because that shows that we’re suppressing COVID-19.”

The Palm Beach Post contributed to this story.

Contact Jeff Schweers at jschweers@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @jeffschweers.

Clarification: The Tallahassee Metropolitan Statistical Area was identified as a "red zone" in a leaked White House Task Force report, not just the City of Tallahassee.

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