SARASOTA –– Not to cause panic because it’s only a model, but models are what public health experts like Chuck Henry, the county’s director of health and human services rely on during the current crisis.
Dire modeling from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington suggests that Florida will not see the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic until May 3.
And the model further projects that 6.766 Floridians will die from the virus by the end of summer.
And to continue the bad news, if the model’s projections is correct, the state will need 2,538 ICU beds by the May 3 peak with only 1,695 available, a deficit of 843 beds.
Not all is bad, however.
By May, the state will probably need only 17,000 hospital beds for COVID-19 patients with a projected 20,000 beds available.
With most experts predicting that the nation will see a peak of COVID-19 cases around April 15, that’s when the institutes modelling projects that the number of cases begin to ramp up, reaching a peak on May 3, some 18 days after the rest of the nation.
Many states across the nation have mandated the closure of all nonessential services and ordered residents to remain at home in an effort to control the spread of the virus.
So far, Gov. Ron DeSantis has resisted implementing a state-wide closure except for Southeast Florida.
Instead, the governor has ordered a 14-day quarantine for all arrivals in the state from New York, placed checkpoints on I-95 and I-10 to stop infected visitors from entering the state, and banned short-term rentals to vacationers.
He justifies his refusal to lock down the state on the loss of jobs it would cost the state in areas where few cases of the virus have been reported.
The research was led by Professor Christopher Murray, director of the institute.
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