ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still consider Orange County to have a “high” level of community transmission.
However, Orange County officials expect the county to be downgraded very soon.
“I don’t have a crystal ball to tell you when that will be, but I believe we are trending in the right direction,” Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said during a briefing on Monday.
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Orange County’s rolling positivity rate is down to 7.6% after being stuck around 20% through August.
“Running through the finish line to me is when we can get just a trickle of cases coming in, where it’s 3% or below, it’s 2% or below,” Demings added.
Currently, 74% of Orange County residents ages 12 and over have now had at least one dose of the vaccine.
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Epidemiologist Alvina Chu said it’s possible we won’t see another big wave of transmission like we’ve just experienced with the Delta variant because we have high enough community immunity through vaccination and natural infection.
Chu went on to say that this virus has surprised them before, so predicting can be tough.
“The other possibility is, as the rest of the world remains, or the large majority, in many places, unvaccinated, potentially, there could be a development of a mutation that could evade the immunity that we have built,” Chu said.
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If that happens, we could find ourselves back at square one.
Even with three big holidays coming up, Chu remains optimistic.
“Potentially, because of the vaccination rates that we have in many places, we could possibly see an increase that isn’t quite as high as what we have seen recently,” Chu said.
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