As we get this week going, there are signs of optimism continuing around the world and here at home. Today, New Zealand and Switzerland are reopening many businesses and loosening restrictions throughout their countries. This as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who'd been in ICU with COVID-19 recently returned to work. Starting today, Germany has required all people to wear masks in public spaces. Meanwhile, here at home, many eyes are on the 14 states which have begun some form of phase 1 reopening, especially Georgia which is the most aggressive in reopening. It’s too early to tell if there’s any impact on these states.
As of now, there are 2,996,678 cases, 207,024 deaths, and 881,903 recoveries worldwide. In the United States, we have 987,322 cases, 55,415 deaths, and 118,781 recoveries. In Florida, there are now 31,528 cases, and 1,074 deaths. There are no specific Florida recoveries disclosed.
We experienced over 263,000 additional diagnosed cases and more than 15,000 deaths worldwide over the weekend. Cases are continuing to spike in Brazil and Russia. Sunday was the highest day for newly diagnosed cases in Russia thus far. Singapore appears to also be seeing a spike in new cases. In the United States, we’ve had over 100,000 new cases and more than 5,000 deaths since Friday morning. One of the most positive developments over the past week, which continued through the weekend, was the improvement in closed case death rate. With nearly 1.1 million “closed COVID-19 cases” the death rate dropped to 19% after peaking at 21%. There’s been a considerable lag in clearly recovered cases in Florida and around the world so there’s room for optimism.
We’ve had 1,880 new cases and 87 deaths in Florida attributed to the coronavirus since Friday morning. After a spike in new cases last Thursday, the news was considerably better over the weekend. Fewer diagnosed cases and the continued decline in positive test rates despite more testing capacity continuing to come online. This was cited by Governor DeSantis on Sunday as being especially important for the next steps to be taken in Florida towards reopening. DeSantis stated Sunday that he’s most focused on the rate of new cases and positive test results. DeSantis said he’s authorizing pharmacies to administer COVID-19 tests and that testing will continue to increase through May. Plus, there's a shipment of antibody tests the state is scheduled to receive this Friday. The peak for cases in our state remains April 3rd. Tracking Florida’s performance against President Trump’s 3-Phase plan for reopening the country, we have the potential to be on track for a potential phase-1 reopening in early May.
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.
- Miami-Dade: 11,351
- Broward: 4,729
- Palm Beach: 2,697
The overall positive test rate in Florida declined from 9.8% Friday morning to 9.1% most recently. It remains lower than the peak of 11% reached about two weeks continuing an encouraging trend. As a reminder, the further into testing we go, the newest diagnosed cases are new cases obtained through community spread. This reinforces the importance of adhering to the warnings of public officials including social distancing, safer-at-home declarations and wearing masks in public.
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