COVID-19 case projection begins to trend downward for SWFL

There’s some good news in the COVID-19 outlook for Southwest Florida: We’re making progress in the fight and the dire prediction of 1,100 cases a day no longer stands.

“Part of a firefighter’s job is we’re trained to go into environments that are dangerous to our health,” said Chief Ryan Lamb with the Cape Coral Fire Department.

Pandemic or not, in Cape Coral, Lamb said his team always answers the call, including helping to run a testing site in the city.

“Our firefighters, paramedics and EMTs are out to actually six days a week now with Lee Health collecting COVID specimens,” Lamb said.

Fortunately for us all, some of those calls are dying down. Lamb said he’s seeing progress when it comes to our COVID-19 cases.

“We are seeing a bit of a downward trend in some numbers, the demand for testing is beginning to taper off a little bit. We’re seeing good resource availability.”

Researchers predict that trend will continue, a major reversal from just two weeks ago when the PolicyLab projected that if we didn’t do more to change our behaviors, Lee County could see more than 1,100 cases a day by Aug. 3.

The new projection for Aug. 3: 197 cases a day.

That’s proof that people are taking the risk seriously, said Lee County Commission Chairman Brian Hamman.

“People are being more responsible – they’re taking precautions, they’re wearing their masks, they’re doing all the things they’re supposed to do.”

This good news can change if people don’t keep following the best practices.

“We’re cautiously optimistic that the numbers trend in the right direction, but we want to see a little bit more data before we feel more comfortable,” Lamb said.

“The biggest thing is we cannot let up; we need to keep up the personal responsibility and keep making good choices or else the numbers could turn around in the wrong direction as we saw a little earlier,” Hamman said.

The projected drop in cases isn’t being seen everywhere in the Sunshine State. The PolicyLab said that Miami remains troublesome, and counties along the Panhandle are seeing higher numbers.