Dr. Fauci is gonna sleep well tonight -- officials in Florida have determined Super Bowl LV was NOT a hotspot for COVID-19 ... with just 53 confirmed cases reported in the weeks following the game.
The Hillsborough County health department in Florida released its preliminary report on Super Bowl-related COVID-19 cases on Wednesday ... with chief epidemiologist Michael Wiese announcing case levels were just "a little bit higher" compared to the rest of the state.
Wiese says that small spike was believed to be a result of house parties and gatherings at restaurants and bars -- NOT fans in attendance at the game.
"While we didn’t really have a lot that was associated directly with the Super Bowl, we do know that the community kind of celebrated and got together in response to the events, which did show some increase in the transmission during the weeks afterward," he said.
Super Bowl host committee president and CEO Rob Higgins says more than 280k fans and workers took part in the game and related activities ... but just 1 out of every 4,700 attendees reported a positive test for COVID-19.
During that same time, the health dept. reported 1 in every 99 citizens in the county tested positive for COVID-19.
"Plain and simple, our collective job was to work together to mitigate risk, and the results shared today show that's what happened," Higgins said. "The Super Bowl was not a super-spreader."
Of course, there's obviously a chance some fans went untested or chose not to reveal their positive tests ... so take it with a grain of salt.