As the Florida death toll continued to rise, experts said there’s no way to gauge how many more will die from a disease that has proven particularly dangerous for the state’s large elderly population.
The Covid-19 disease killed two more state residents, including a 96-year-old woman who lived in a Fort Lauderdale assisted-living center that has seen a cluster of cases, state officials said Saturday. Her death was the third attributed to the disease at the Atria Willow Wood assisted-living facility in Fort Lauderdale.
The disease also showed up in the Broward school system, the school district announced Saturday. Someone at Walter C. Young Middle School in Pembroke Pines tested positive. The district would not say whether the case involved a student or a member of the staff. The individual was last present on campus March 12.
The latest deaths bring the state’s total to 12, a figure that is expected to continue climbing, especially because of the state’s large population of seniors. Estimates of the possible U.S. death toll run from tens of thousands to 1.7 million.
“A lot of Americans have this mistaken impression that something like that can’t happen here,” said John Lednicky, a virus expert at the University of Florida. “Look at what’s happening in New York City. It’s spreading, lots of deaths. It doesn’t bode well for Florida, if we don’t get this under control.”
In Italy, the worst-hit country, the death toll reached 4,825 Saturday, with no sign that the virtual shutdown of the country has slowed the illness’s advance.
Like Florida, Italy imposed restrictions gradually, fearful of causing lasting economic damage. The government isolated towns in the north, the hardest-hit region, but allowed restaurants and tourists attractions to remain open. Eventually, as the infection numbers scaled to catastrophic heights, the government imposed a general lockdown and deployed the army to enforce it, as respirators and hospital beds ran low and health care workers themselves contracted the disease. The death rate for Italy is extraordinarily high, topping 8 percent.
José Szapocznik, an epidemiologist at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, attributed Italy’s high death rate to its large elderly population, high number of cases and problems with its health care system. He said the U.S. death rate currently stands at about 1.3 percent.
“They have a much older population than we do,” he said. “There may be other factors as well, such as having a much larger number of cases and a health care system that is not up to par.”
Italy, with its low birth rate, has the world’s second-oldest population. In a way, Florida, with the highest concentration of elderly people of any state, may be the Italy of the United States.
“The older you get, the less responsive your immune system is,” he said. “Also depends on how fit you are. There’s no question that people who are older are more at risk.”
Although Florida’s new cases have been across all ages, the deaths have been all among the elderly. The youngest fatality was a 68-year-old woman. The rest of the fatalities fell among those in their 70s, 80s and 90s. And in an ominous development last week, state officials announced positive tests at 19 assisted-living centers, indicating the infection had spread to densely populated for the people most succeptible to harm from the disease.
“Here in Florida we have the largest number of people in any state over 70, so that’s of particular concern for us,” Lednicky said. “We have a large number of vulnerable people.”
The 96-year-old woman whose death was announced Saturday had been a resident of Atria Willow Wood. She is the third confirmed coronavirus death in Broward, according to the governor’s office. Two others from the same facility have died: a 92-year-old man and a 77-year-old man.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said 10 people at Willow Wood had tested positive, including the three who died. He said four tests are pending.
The facility didn’t properly screen construction workers, staff and cooks who were allowed to work their jobs unimpeded, DeSantis said.
“They had sick construction workers, sick hospital staff, sick people in the food service,” he said.
The governor said law enforcement officers and state and federal health officials were on site, but he said that shouldn’t have been necessary to make sure residents were protected from a threat that had been widely publicized.
“If you’re in this business to take care of people who may be succeptible to this, you shouldn’t need to have people breathing down your neck,” he said. “You should do the right thing and protect the folks in Florida who are most vulnerable.”
Atria Senior Living on Saturday defended the facility’s actions Saturday, saying it had followed all guidelines from state and local officials and sometimes had exceeded them.
“As soon as the Department of Health office in Broward County notified us of a confirmed case in our community, we immediately escalated our safety protocols and expanded our extensive emergency-scenarios planning,” Mike Gentry, senior vice president of care, said in a written statement. “Since March 16, the Department of Health has been on site several times to review our plans and has been supportive of our response and protocols.
“Our primary concern right now is supporting our residents and staff and doing everything in our power to keep them safe. This is a time when business and government should work together to protect our communities. We will also continue to work with the Department of Health and Agency for Health Care Administration as we monitor and respond to this ever-changing situation.”
There are now 720 documented cases of the new coronavirus statewide, according to state figures released Saturday evening. Miami-Dade County has 169 cases, Broward 164 and Palm Beach County 56.
For all the talk about the elderly population and the relative quality of health care systems, scientists and doctors say the most important thing to for each of us to avoid contracting or spreading the virus.
“The number one factor is going to be how many people stay home and isolate themselves and break the chain of transmission,” Szapocznik said. “At some point, if we don’t control the number of cases in this country and we overwhelm the medical system, our death rate could get worse.”
David Fleshler can be reached at dfleshler@sun-sentinel.com and 954-356-4535.
Staff writer Marc Freeman contributed to this report.
