“The number of new infections may be waning, but Florida still reported a record number of COVID-19 deaths this past week,” reports the Tampa Bay Times. “The state added 129,240 new COVID-19 cases over the past seven days, the lowest weekly case rate in more than a month, in a state report released Friday. But it also reported 2,345 new COVID-related deaths, the highest single-week death toll since the start of the pandemic.”

“Due to normal lags in how deaths are reported, more than 1,900 of these deaths occurred weeks earlier. New federal data shows that Florida’s daily death toll peaked at 244 on Aug. 15, well above the previous record of daily deaths set in August 2020. New infections continue to be concentrated among children and adolescents under 20 years old, who represent more than one-third of new cases.”

“However, reports on hospital admissions this week provided some hope that the worst of the current infection wave is over. The Florida Hospital Association on Friday reported 14,279 COVID admissions in Florida hospitals, almost 10 percent fewer than one week ago. Nearly one-quarter of hospitalized COVID patients are in intensive care units.”

There is the possibility that optimism is misplaced however, as the decline in hospital admissions may be a by-product of hospitals being at capacity, with many facilities adopting a triage model where only the sickest patients are admitted, and the rest are sent home.

“New cases remain concentrated among Florida’s youngest residents. Children and teenagers between 12 and 19 had the highest infection rate in the state, with nearly one out of every 100 residents in that age group infected in the past week.”

The spike in pediatric admissions is due almost entirely to public schools becoming “super-spreader” locations where children from MAGA households spread the Delta variant to everyone else, a by-product of failed Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s ban on mask mandates in Florida public schools.

“Florida hospitals saw 452 pediatric admissions with confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the past seven days. That’s more than five times the number of admissions from the same week last year. The current wave is also proving to be more lethal for children. The state reported its 13th pediatric death in a child under 16 years old this week. It’s the fifth week in a row with at least one child death.”