GREEN COVE SPRINGS – COVID-19 cases have gone down ever so slightly while vaccinations have increased, but the county’s Florida Department of Health administrator Heather Huffman is still worried.

Clay County’s sister county, Duval, has been making the rounds in the news – it’s one of the worst cities in the country – and Clay County isn’t fairing too much better. Huffman said there has been a slight decrease in cases in the county, but she’s not yet willing to call it a downward trend.

“I’m going to see if that holds and maintains [before calling it a downward trend],” Huffman said during the Aug. 10 Board of County Commissioners meeting. “The highest was 1,601 cases a couple of weeks back. The week ending with last Thursday was 1,509, and the last four days have seen 792, which is about 198 a day. So that’s a slight decrease but I won’t say it’s a downward trend until it actually is.”

Huffman also stressed the Delta variant is extremely contagious, citing that it’s two-and-a-half to three times more infectious than the original virus the county still doesn’t yet have under control. She said it’s as infectious as Chicken Pox.

“There’s another variant coming behind this one,” Huffman said. “The Lambda variant is alive and well in South America and even more infectious than Delta. I say this as a warning as now is the time to get vaccinated.”

Huffman said vaccinations have gone up slightly to about 700 or 800 a day for the first and second dose. Clay County as a whole has a 49% vaccination rate with 39% of residents fully vaccinated.

“We’re continuing to look at hospitals, doing weekly calls with the hospital CEOs, and they are hanging on but it’s pretty tough,” Huffman said. “There are long wait times, lots of people in beds, large volumes of COVID-19...it’s a very big cycle. Most people in the hospital [with COVID-19] are unvaccinated.

“Wear a mask, even if you’re vaccinated because the Delta variant can still get you infected, social distance when you can, and get vaccinated when you can. It’s the only way to prevent serious illness, hospitalization and death.

Huffman said there is likely an underreporting of the virus in the county due to at-home tests now available. These weren’t available last year so basically all tests were reported. Now, people can test at home and when they test positive, they don’t necessarily report it to the health department.