This daily update is designed to put everything into perspective with straight-forward facts. COVID-19 remained the leading cause of death in the United States over the weekend according to CDC data. This as the United States has more reported deaths than any other country in the world as we passed 20,000. A week ago, COVID-19 was the third leading killer. More optimistically, Dr. Anthony Fauci expressed optimism that efforts we’ve taken to combat the spread of the virus have been working and suggested we may begin to reopen the country and the economy during the month of May.
This is the week of the projected national peak in cases, Thursday specifically, with Florida’s current peak expected to be reached next week. As of this entry, there are 19,895 cases and 461 deaths in Florida. In the US, there are 560,433 cases, 22,115 deaths, and 32,634 recoveries. Worldwide, we have 1,856,798 cases, 114,312 deaths, and 428,275 recoveries.
We experienced more than 335k additional diagnosed cases worldwide over the weekend and now have more than 100,000 deaths attributed to the virus worldwide. In the United States, we had 91k new cases and greater than 5,000 deaths. The most disconcerting aspect of the virus remains the death/recovery rate based on closed cases. The common pattern with the virus spreading is an increase in death rates with vulnerable early on, followed by improving rates overtime as people begin to recover.
In Florida, we had 3,069 new cases and 90 deaths over the weekend. We received a mixed bag of news. The total death toll in Florida is now expected to be lower than previous estimates with 112 deaths daily at our peak. That estimate is less than half of the prior estimates, however the anticipated peak is now April 26th for Florida. That’s five days later than the projections of a week ago. We now have more than 2,600 Floridians hospitalized with COVID-19, though bed capacity remains below 50%, and estimates still show enough capacity for the projected increase in cases through the peak in Florida.
Florida dropped to 9th in the country in total cases and remain 11th in deaths despite being the third most populous state. We’re performing far better than most states on a relative basis. We’re also testing more aggressively than most states, adjusted for population, making the performance of our state even more impressive. This is all encouraging news. The range in age for positive tests in our state ranges from infants to 104. More than half of all of Florida’s cases currently are in the tri-county area with Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach having the most cases in the state in that order.
- Broward: 2,945
- Miami-Dade: 7,058
- Palm Beach: 1,646
We continue to see a high rate of positive test results in Florida. To date, nearly 11% of all tests for COVID-19 have come back positive. The further into testing we go the more likely the newest diagnosed cases are new cases. This reinforces the importance of adhering to the warnings of public officials including social distancing and safer-at-home declarations.
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