Monitor Editor
GREEN COVE SPRINGS— The Florida Department of Health’s administrator in Clay County said new COVID cases in the county continued a slow decline, along with a similar decrease in daily vaccinations.
Heather Huffman told Clay County Commissioners during their Sept. 28 meeting that her department is seeing between 80 and 90 new cases a day.
That is down from an average of 134 new daily cases in the first week in September and 118 average daily new cases in September’s second week.
She also said the county’s positivity rate over the past seven days was 11.7%.
“At one point (the rate) was as high as close to 30%,” she said. “The goal is still to get back under 10%. Back in (the) May-June time frame, before the Delta search hit, we were around 5%.”
Huffman said that 30% of the county’s new cases are originating in the Middleburg zip code of 32068. Twenty-five percent of county residents live there.
“It is still the lowest vaccination zip code,” she said of the Middleburg area.
Huffman said that soon after students returned to school, the five-to-14-year-old-age group led the county in new cases.
“But now we’re at the 15 to 24 (year-olds) being the highest age bracket for cases,” she said.
Huffman also said that of the county’s 645 COVID-related deaths, 41% occurred during the recent Delta variant surge.
She said 55% of the county’s residents age 12 and older have been partially or fully vaccinated, and 48% are fully vaccinated.
“First doses are down,” she said. “They had been running as high as seven to eight hundred a day. “We’re down to between 100 and 200 a day for the county.”
Huffman repeated, as she has in earlier meetings with county commissioners, that the vaccination is the primary method of preventing severe illness and death from the virus.
Booster and updated quarantine rule
Huffman said the Centers for Disease Control has approved a booster shot for people immunized with the Pfizer vaccine.
“It is for individuals 65 and older, those that are high risk for severe illness,” she said, “and those that have occupational high risk such as teachers, nurses, health care providers and your frontline cashiers in grocery stores.”
Huffman also said her new boss, recently-appointed Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, issued a new rule for asymptomatic students testing positive for the virus.
She said the new rule gives parents the choice of opting out of quarantine for those students.
