14-day rolling positivity rate is at 15.9% in Orange County, records show

The number of new COVID-19 infections in Central Florida continues to rise.

In Orange County, the 14-day rolling positivity rate is at 15.9% according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the middle of March, that number was at 2.3%.

News 6 spoke to the new Director of Health Services in Orange County Thursday to ask what’s being done to keep people safe and what his message is to the community.

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Dr. Raul Pino said he has noticed a sharp increase in cases this past week, compared to prior weeks. He has watched a steady rise in new infections for the past seven weeks. He noted the increase has not yet translated into a sharp increase in hospitalizations or ICU admissions.

“This week, actually Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday has been very high compared to prior weeks,” Pino said. “On Monday, we had more than 800 cases and on Tuesday and Wednesday more than 500 cases each day.”

Pino worked for the state as the Orange County Medical Director during the height of the pandemic.

“There is a prediction that we’re going to have a wave in the fall and winter, so people should be getting ready,” Pino said.

Signs of a spike this summer are already showing up in wastewater samples in Central Florida.

“What we’re seeing right now resembles the lead up to other spikes,” said Altamonte Springs City Manager Frank Martz.

Martz said Altamonte Springs has tracked wastewater data since 2020. He said the pattern he is seeing now he has seen three times before.

“What we see before a spike are spikes in the percentages of change,” Martz said. “What we’re seeing right now is a slow steady increase, not only of those percentages of change, but we are seeing a change in the numerical values and the actual concentration of COVID.”

The data from city, county and state agencies shows a steady increase week to week. The test positivity remains much lower than it was at the height of the omicron surge after Christmas.

Dr. Todd Husty, an EMS Medical Director in Seminole County said so much has changed when it comes to COVID.

“It’s hard to look at where we are today and reflect back and say, ‘Gee, this would’ve been a bad positivity rate six months ago.’ It was a worse virus six months ago,” Husty said.

Husty said it is difficult to compare what’s considered an alarm bell now compared to past months in the pandemic. He credits better treatments and vaccines for the change, along with heightened natural immunity.

“I think sort of the key is it’s not as bad of a disease right now. It is treatable,” he said.

Pino believes part of the increase in cases we are seeing now is due to people in need of second vaccine doses or booster shots. He said those people have waning immunity after four to six months.

“Many people who got vaccines at the beginning of the pandemic that have now not been boosted or haven’t had their second doses, their immunity is decreasing,” Pino said. “You can pick up where you left off, meaning if you had your first dose you could have your second and then the booster in four to six months.”

Orange County Health Services is closely watching the current trend, and watching what could happen in the months ahead. Pino said their effort is focused on providing people the resources to take personal responsibility.

“We perhaps need to increase our communications with the public to offer that clarity through the noises,” Pino said. “The reality is now we have everything that we need to fight this pandemic, and now the responsibility is shifting from the government to the individual. We are eliminating mandates. We are not requiring masks, but we have to inform the individual to take individual responsibility within their families to protect themselves.”

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Photo: Anthony Richardson; Credit: Alex Shepherd

Florida's first spring camp of the Billy Napier era will come to a close on Thursday, concluded by the Gators' (typically) annual Orange and Blue game in front of fans at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

The playbook won't be fully unveiled on either side of the ball, and there will certainly be hiccups as players continue to adjust to new schemes, but regardless, the game will provide media and fans alike with an extended opportunity to check in on the team's progress under Napier after 13 spring practices.

Below, we've compiled the three most important things to watch when the orange and the blue go head-to-head in The Swamp on Thursday evening.

Richardson has been the first quarterback up throughout spring and appears poised to start when Week 1 rolls around. When that opportunity arises, Richardson will have a lot to prove after a promising yet inconsistent first season of playing time in 2021.

By now, we know that Richardson is a freak athlete for the position. He has a rocket launcher for a right arm and was clocked at 21 miles per hour on an 80-yard touchdown run last year.

But how has Richardson developed as it pertains to making his reads as a passer and limiting turnovers? What is his comfort level in the offense Napier has installed thus far?

Field processing and turnovers were reasons of concern last year for Richardson, seen specifically in his start against Georgia — to be fair, he couldn't have asked for a more daunting first start than against the Bulldogs' defense — as well as the conclusion of his otherwise miraculous comeback effort against LSU the week prior.

Now that he holds the keys to the car that is Florida's offense, Richardson has been given every opportunity to showcase his growth as a quarterback while earning a fresh start with the new coaching staff. Thursday night should show us just how far he's come — perhaps with a few jaw-dropping plays onlookers have grown accustomed to.

Napier welcomed five transfers to the program before spring practices began, a mix of immediate contributing-caliber talent and depth players to develop for the long run: Three of his former Louisiana players in running back Montrell Johnson and offensive linemen O'Cyrus Torrence and Kamryn Waites, as well as former Georgia cornerback Jalen Kimber and former Ohio State quarterback Jack Miller III.

Realistically, Johnson, Torrence and Kimber could step onto the field and contribute immediately for UF this season. Johnson was the 2021 Sun Belt Freshman of the Year at UL after scoring 12 touchdowns and, as expected, has worked himself into the first-team rotation at running back this spring.

Torrence, a three-year starter for Napier at guard, has yet to allow a sack in his college career. Florida could use that dependability on its O-line and must replace a starter at right guard anyway, so it's easy to peg Torrence into the top of the depth chart. Kimber, meanwhile, is competing to start at cornerback opposite Jason Marshall Jr. after being in the mix to start for Georgia last year before a season-ending injury.

It will be interesting to see if these three players work their way into the "starting lineup" on Thursday night (be prepared for plenty of players to rotate in and out). Miller's progression as Richardson's projected backup and Waites' development as a reserve tackle — a massive one at 6-foot-8, 358 pounds — will be worth monitoring as well.

The Gators will be rolling out at least four new starters defensively on Thursday with the need to replace two defensive linemen, a linebacker and a cornerback, as well as a new defensive scheme under coordinator Patrick Toney.

Players have praised Toney quite a bit this spring for his informative and interactive coaching style and for simplifying the Gators' defense, allowing players to think less and play faster. If this is truly the case, expect the unit to look a lot different than it did under Todd Grantham, whose defense was known to be complex and ask a lot of its players.

But what will the new scheme look like, exactly? And who will step into larger roles to replace the snaps that have been left behind? The Orange and Blue game will provide the first set of clues.

Stay tuned to AllGators for continuous coverage of Florida Gators football, basketball and recruiting. Follow along on social media at @SI_AllGators on Twitter and Florida Gators on Sports Illustrated on Facebook.

After an increase in the concentration of COVID-19 gene copies — fragments of the virus found in infected or recently infected people’s stool — levels have gone down in local wastewater over the last week.

The increase was first highlighted by Altamonte Springs City Manager Frank Martz after a Thursday, April 7 reading in the Altamonte Springs sewer service area showed a 1,661% increase in COVID-19 concentration since March 10. The Casselberry sewer service area saw a 4,323% increase during the same period.

Since then, COVID-19 virus concentrations have declined from 488,307 gene copies per liter on April 7 to 180,399 gene copies per liter as of Monday in the Altamonte sewer service area, and from 226,558 gene copies per liter on April 7 to 26,368 on Monday in the Casselberry sewer service area.

This decrease over almost two weeks suggests there is not as much COVID-19 viral load in the community now, said Edwin Oh, an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Kerkorian School of Medicine. Oh leads a wastewater surveillance program in partnership with researchers from neighboring states.

“What we’re looking for when we look at these wastewater treatment plants is a trend, a week-over-week type of trend,” Oh said.

Viral load on its own can’t convey the number of people in a community with COVID-19. Two people testing positive may each have different amounts of the virus in their bodies, which is one reason why trends such as decreases and increases, rather than copies per liter, are important.

“Ultimately wastewater is a nice complement to other public health tools that we’re using to figure out infection levels in a community,” Oh said.

There are other signals Florida could be seeing a slight increase in COVID-19 cases.

Hospitalizations, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has increasingly emphasized as a measure of whether to be concerned about COVID-19, are up by 1% in Florida, according to Department of Health and Human Services data collected by The New York Times, though they are at low levels. In Orange County, there were 57 COVID-19 hospital admissions from April 12-18, a 32% change from the week before, according to HHS.

Orange County’s positivity rate has been increasing over the last few weeks, up to 6.7% on Thursday, the Department of Health in Orange County announced on Twitter.

With the rise of at-home tests, many cases may go unreported, making it harder to get a representative picture of the community from positivity rates, said Thomas Hladish, a University of Florida research scientist who helped create a model that predicted the rise and fall of the omicron surge. There could be far more positive cases than the government knows about, he said last Tuesday.

“It doesn’t even matter if I wanted the states to know that I had tested positive. I don’t have a way of making it count,” Hladish said.

The big question is whether any of these slight increases in cases and hospitalizations may be the beginning of a BA.2-fueled surge in Florida or across the U.S. Hladish does not think the state is at the beginning of another major surge, even though he believes another surge is eventually going to happen.

BA.2 has been the dominant COVID-19 variant in Central Florida wastewater for weeks, and there appear to still be only modest increases in cases and hospitalizations, he said. Many people caught COVID-19 during the winter omicron wave, giving them temporary immunity.

“If it was going to take off I think that we should already be seeing that,” Hladish concluded.

Elena Cyrus, an epidemiologist at the University of Central Florida, isn’t so sure. The slight rise in cases may be a result of spring break crowds, she noted — but it may be something more.

“It is probable that we will not have another significant surge, but I think we need to wait on the data within the next two to three weeks to confirm the direction,” she said.

ccatherman@orlandosentinel.com

Florida quarterback Jack Miller III arrived in Gainesville in early January by way of Ohio State with nearly as much collegiate experience as returning quarterback Anthony Richardson, who was expected to step into a starting role during spring camp.

The job wasn’t simply going to be handed to Richardson — the Gators needed capable signal-callers to push the redshirt sophomore to perform at the highest level when he returned from offseason knee surgery.

The uncertainty surrounding the future of Emory Jones — who announced Thursday he will transfer to Arizona State — coupled with the lack of playing time for quarterbacks Jalen Kitna and Carlos Del Rio-Wilson led Florida’s coaching staff to seek out a fifth signal-caller, one capable of enrolling at the top of the year.

One more transfer:Florida Gators quarterback Carlos Del Rio-Wilson to enter name into NCAA transfer portal

Billy Napier had recruited Jack Miller before

The Gators settled on Miller, who would be entering his redshirt sophomore season after playing in six games across two seasons with the Buckeyes. He’d been recruited previously by head coach Billy Napier when Napier was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Arizona State.

The prior relationship allowed the Gators to get an early foot in the door.

“He was one of the first people that I talked to when I entered the portal,” Miller recalled. “And once I found out he was coming here, I kind of knew that I was going to end up here.”

He may have been the newcomer in the room, but with Napier familiar with his skill set, combined with UF’s apparent opening at the position, Miller wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to compete for the role of Florida’s starting quarterback.

Throughout spring practice, Miller worked his way up the depth chart and moved ahead of Kitna and Del Rio-Wilson within the first three weeks of camp.

The latter opted to enter his name into the NCAA’s transfer portal five days after Florida’s spring game, while Kitna served as Miller’s backup on the Orange team. The son of former NFL quarterback Jon Kitna ultimately attempted three passes against the Blue team defense, all of which fell incomplete. Miller, meanwhile, completed 13-of-23 pass attempts for 121 yards during the spring game on April 14.

The opinion of many fans and teammates is that Richardson exited the spring as UF’s starting quarterback headed into the 2022 season. Miller maintains he and Richardson will continue to compete for the job heading into the opener Sept. 3 against Utah.

“We both had pretty good springs I want to say. We’ll both be ready to play,” Miller said. “I think competition is always a good thing. It really pushes you both to really reach your best potential.”

Former Buckeye still competing to be Florida's starting QB

Miller believes he’ll improve away from the program and during the offseason.

Having invested a majority of his time into acclimating to a new environment, and to meeting his new coaches and teammates, Miller felt as if he wasn’t able to properly dive into Florida's playbook. Before returning to the field in August, Miller expects to be more acquainted with the scheme and UF’s personnel.

“Everything goes so fast, and during spring ball everything's happening so fast, you don’t really have a chance to take time and really learn all the coverages you’re going to see, all the plays and all that type of stuff,” he said. “So, that’s really what I want to dive into and get really good at, knowing our system inside and out.”

Having spent his first two seasons with the Buckeyes, Miller has had to flush much of what he learned in favor of the offensive system being implemented at Florida under Napier. Any hope Miller had of expediting the learning process once he arrived in Gainesville went out the window when he got his hands on the playbook.

“I would say the offenses are pretty different. It might be a little too early to say anything like that, but yeah, there’s not a whole lot of similarities I don’t think,” Miller said. “I think it just takes time, honestly. Just getting comfortable here and getting comfortable with everybody and developing time with all the receivers, I think it takes a lot of time.”

Time may not be on his side, at least not for the upcoming season. Still, Miller isn’t ready to hand the starting quarterback job to Richardson — not after uprooting his life in Columbus to play for a coach who initially recruited him as a 14-year-old.

As the Gators now focus on offseason training, Miller has turned his attention to improving rather than fixating on where he stands in the depth chart — although that doesn’t mean he’s content with holding a clipboard and wearing a headset as the team’s second-string signal-caller during Napier’s first season with the Florida program.

“I feel like it’s been a good competition. I come in and we compete everyday,” Miller said. “I feel like I’ve gotten better, for sure, especially in (April), and I’m going to continue to get better and work hard everyday.”

Photo: Tyreak Sapp; Credit: Alex Shepherd

Sometimes youth prevails. That's especially true in college football where youth is put to the test on any given roster, and the Florida Gators showcased some of their young talent during last week's Orange and Blue spring game, particularly on defense.

Throughout former Florida head coach Dan Mullen's tenure, though the team lacked promise in the recruiting aspect of things, it was able to find a couple of gems defensively and that was showcased during the spring game.

Players such as defensive linemen Tyreak Sapp, cornerback Jordan Young and linebacker Diwun Black all showcased promise that perhaps should be expected from them moving forward. So did cornerback transfer Jalen Kimber, although he joined the program after Billy Napier took over as head coach.

The star of the group of young defenders was Sapp, a 6-foot-2, 264-pound wrecking ball of a defensive lineman. With the ability to play both inside and out within the Florida defense, he certainly will look toward having more of a role this season.

During the contest, Sapp generated plenty of plays including six tackles, a tackle for loss and a forced fumble for the Blue team last week. He also pressured quarterback Jack Miller into throwing an interception.

Sapp's explosive plays were noticed by veteran linebacker Ventrell Miller, who said the redshirt freshman has been the "eye-catcher" among young defenders.

"Sapp definitely has been the eye-catcher," Miller told a scrum of reporters shortly following the game last Thursday. "Sapp goes out, works hard every day. He definitely makes a lot of plays. So, yeah, I'm just glad to see them boys getting in and coming out there doing a good job."

Another redshirt freshman, Young also received plenty of praise during the contest, excelling at the STAR position on Thursday. On multiple occasions, Young looked like a heat-seeking missile when making a tackle, showing his willingness as a tackler. He totaled six tackles on the night, as well as two pass breakups that weren't registered in the box score.

Following the game, Young met with the media to discuss his progression within the defense and his time playing at STAR. He indicated that it was recent when he transitioned back to the position, playing primarily on the boundary during spring. Due to injuries, though, Young was forced to play the role he did last year.

“I feel like I did good. I put my trust in God and just went out there and played. My teammates went out there and balled, too," Young said of his performance.

"They were calling certain things for everyone to make a great impact on offense and defense, and we were just going out there and had a good game.”

Young, listed at 6-foot, 188 pounds, is expected to be a utilized player moving forward as he continues to work as a versatile defensive back for co-defensive coordinator Patrick Toney's defense.

A fellow DB, Kimber, a redshirt sophomore cornerback transfer, also shined under the lights. After opting to pursue a different opportunity at Florida after a couple of years with the Georgia Bulldogs, Kimber has been thrust into the top portion of the depth chart outside for the Gators.

He will likely be utilized in a rotation with players such as Jaydon Hill and Avery Helm to begin his journey, but he showed on Thursday that the competition at outside cornerback opposite of Jason Marshall Jr. is absolutely alive in well.

On the night, Kimber came up with one of the two interceptions of the day, while also showcasing solid man coverage ability against Florida receivers. Simply put, he stood out, accounting for six tackles and two pass breakups to go along with his INT.

Talked about at length following the game, Black also appears to be a player on a significant rise within the Florida football program. The junior LB who transferred to Florida last year out of JUCO appears to have a foothold on the backup LB position and could push veteran Amari Burney for playing time early this season due to his coverage ability.

On the day, Black accounted for three tackles and two pass breakups and was praised by both Miller and head coach Billy Napier following the contest for his hard work and dedication to his craft.

Stay tuned to AllGators for continuous coverage of Florida Gators football, basketball and recruiting. Follow along on social media at @SI_AllGators on Twitter and Florida Gators on Sports Illustrated on Facebook.