FLORIDA, USA — Florida continues to see COVID-19 cases plummet across the state, reporting numbers not seen since prior to its most recent summer surge.
On Friday, Florida's Department of Health reported 12,880 new COVID-19 cases between Oct. 22 and Oct. 28. That's the lowest number of reported cases over a week since June 18.
The same improvement can be seen in the state's percent positivity for new cases. Florida reported that its percent positivity over the past week was 3 percent. That's the lowest percent positivity the state has seen since it began releasing weekly reports in June.
The primary difference between the past summer's worsening pandemic and the last is the availability of vaccines, as well as the more infectious version of COVID-19, the delta variant, which took hold as the primary variant.
Health experts referred to the wave of surging cases and hospitalizations as a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says vaccines teach our immune systems how to recognize and fight the virus that causes COVID-19, which helps to limit the spread of the virus and reduces hospitalizations and deaths.
Data from the CDC shows Florida had a spike in the number of people who received a dose of the COVID vaccine just as delta began making its presence known. However, as cases and hospitalizations continue to drop so is the state's overall vaccination trend.
