The good COVID-19 news as far as Florida: for the second consecutive week, Sunday’s update from the Department of Health stopped the streak of single-day records for new cases.
The not-so-good novel coronavirus news as far as Florida: the Sunday update case counts usually run lower than the rest of the week and this week’s 3,494 tops the previous Sunday high (last week) by 73%. And current hospitalizations accelerated their rise in Miami-Dade.
In addition to the new cases, the state added 17 deaths, 13 of which were in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
Since the pandemic started, Florida has had 97,291 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 3,161 deaths.
Throughout the pandemic, the daily case report numbers on Sundays have tended to be lower than the five days previous because fewer people work in labs and enter data on the weekends. So, Sunday reflects Saturday’s decrease in processing tests and reporting results.
Monday tends to be a reflection of a similar decrease on Sunday, but also a normal amount of data entry happening early Monday.
South Florida counties cases and deaths
Miami-Dade: the state’s leader in COVID-19 cases and deaths added 710 cases (25,790 total) and 10 deaths (884 total) in Sunday’s update. In Sunday’s Miami-Dade’s New Normal Dashboard, the county reports the average positive test rate over the last 14 days has risen to 10.5%.
The county puts red flags next to its goals of “downward trajectory of documented cases in a 14-day period” and “14 consecutive days where the positive test rate is below 10% on average (of the previous 14 days).
Broward: Another 318 cases and three deaths put Broward’s pandemic totals at 11,155 and 373.
Palm Beach: There were 248 new cases in Palm Beach, but no deaths reported, so those totals are, respectively, 10,754 and 468.
Monroe: Four cases were discovered. The county of the Florida Keys has had 162 cases and four deaths since the pandemic started.
Hospitalizations
Among the measures of progress against the pandemic are hospitalizations. The state reported another 98 hospitalizations Sunday.
In Miami-Dade, the hospitalization count continues to rise, according to what hospitals are self-reporting to the county. Sunday’s New Normal Dashboard current hospitalization chart showed 714 hospitalized at the moment, an increase of 37 from the previous day and the ninth consecutive day that current hospitalizations rose.
Testing
There’s no question Florida has been testing more and reporting more than previously. After weeks of being below the University of South Florida College of Medicine dean’s recommendation that the state test about 33,000 people every day, Florida has been above that number across the last two weeks.
Sunday’s update showed 38,055 more people tested, bringing that total to 1,600,335.
According to the state’s latest release, the average daily percentage of people who tested positive for the first time was 9.38 for June 14-20, up from 4.86 for June 7-13. The median day for June 14-20 was 9.96% (June 18) while the median day for June 7-13 was 4.95 (June 11).
This story was originally published June 21, 2020 12:54 PM.
