UF study: Omicron should peak in February
You don’t need a front-page story to inform you that getting a COVID-19 test now is hard.
Home test kits fly off the shelves at the same speed appointments get gobbled up for tests at clinics and pharmacies, as people rush to get tested after holiday travel and the light-speed spread of the Omicron variant.
There’s new news, and it’s good: Osceola County will open another Curative testing location at Centro Cristiano Dios De Pactos Church at Partin Settlement Road and Simmons Road, just east of Florida’s Turnpike, set to be open Monday through Friday. Like the one at Infantry Veteran’s Park in Buenaventura Lakes and three weekly sites at local libraries, it’s another walk-up testing site, and should be up and running by the end of the week (check aroundosceola.com for updates).
Osceola County Emergency Operations Director Bill Litton said scientific studies show the Omicron surge should last just a few more weeks and then decline as fast as it appeared, and a drive-up site wouldn’t be in place until well into the surge’s subsiding.
“The Curative operation at the Department of Health is doing great, I’ve been monitoring the numbers,” Litton said.
His department has created an updated and confirmed database of all the Osceola County locations offering testing, including the walk-up sites, urgent care clinics, pharmacies and chains like CVS and Walgreens. You can access it at www.osceola.org/covid19testing.
That page also has vaccination locations and information, and you can still text your ZIP code to 438829 from your cellphone to get a list of closest places with vaccines available, as getting your shots and booster remains the best way to fend off infection, said the Osceola County Health Department’s Jeremy Lanier.
“The reports are the effects are less severe than with the Delta variation, but it is more contagious,” he said. “Mild illness can still mean being in bed for days, so that points back to the importance of getting vaccinated.”
Both Lanier and Litton warned against “popup” vaccination locations that are taking advantage of those desperate, and people going door-to-door offering testing, and to be wary of those that ask for financial or other sensitive information.
But as for testing, it’s still hard to come by in Osceola County. Lanier said demand has increased at the DOH; appointments are booked through Saturday. And on Tuesday at the Buenaventura Lakes walk-up location, which opened at 8 a.m., the line snaked back over two tenths of a mile into the park by 8:45, when the parking lot was full and people were parking in the Buenaventura Boulevard median and on the side of Royal Palm Drive. Wait times were in the “most of the day” range; Jean Paul Cintron said he waited six hours the Monday after Christmas.
“In back to get a follow up because that was positive,” he said. “I can get my son tested easier because the late-night pediatrics have them available, but for me this is difficult. And I don’t know how they expect older people to stand in a line like this.”
Lanier said the focus in the last month at the DOH has flipped from vaccinations to tests.
“Outside of suggesting looking for at-home test, we’re just asking people to be patient,” Lanier said.
According to a study by three University of Florida researchers, a likely scenario for the Omicron variant is for this surge in cases to continue into February, then fall as sharply as it rose into March. While infection numbers will likely be higher than last summer’s Delta surge — Florida recorded over 140,000 new cases over three days leading into the New Year’s weekend, the number of COVID-related deaths likely will be over three times lower than Deltarelated deaths.
The study can be found at https://bit.ly/3t0P8Hg; the abstract is at https://bit.ly/3FXoP8x.
Litton, who also noted the county’s positive infection rate went from 3 percent at the end of November to over 20 percent just one month later, said hospital admissions are up in the county, but not at the level over the summer during the Delta variant outbreak.
“ICU levels are high as well, they’re going to be high this time of year anyway, but the situation’s not like last time, where hospitals were diverting to other locations,” he said.
