By now you probably know the COVID news currently isn’t the best. The summer spike in COVID-19 cases is happening across the country, however, it’s currently worst in Florida. Based on last week’s reporting, Florida had 20% of the new COVID-19 cases and we have about 6.7% of the country’s population. Heading into the summer Florida was the top domestic destination for those looking to have a good time this summer. Looks like some of what they brought would have better been left behind. So, here’s the deal when we break down the recent outbreak of COVID-19 in Florida.
On July 1st we were pacing around 1,200 cases per day. Last week that jumped to 6,100 per day. This includes the semi-ominous fact that Saturday, the last day we have reporting for in Florida, we had the highest number of new cases 8,490 that we’ve had since April 13th and the second-highest since mid-January. In other words, the surge was still surging heading into this week. Now, it's worth noting a summer surge of some sort was expected in advance.
Governor DeSantis said, "We knew it was going to be low in May and it was, and we know as we got to the end of June, July would go up because that’s what happened last year". Well, that’s true and what we’re seeing reflects those expectations, but I don’t think any of us want to experience the same cycle as last year. After all, the vaccinations were supposed to largely address that, right? Here’s what we can learn from the timeline of what happened last year.
2020’s summer surge in new COVID-19 cases started on June 3rd. Florida’s trend rose daily until peaking on July 18th with over 11,900 daily cases. So how does that compare to this year? Florida’s 2021 summer surge started June 22nd and continued rising daily through Saturday which is the most recent information we have available. The daily average over the past week was 6,491 cases. So, the timeline of the surges isn’t perfect but it’s similar. And most recently, we’re pacing 45% fewer new COVID-19 cases per day over a year ago in Florida. What we now need to hope for is that like last year will reflect the peak of the summer surge with improvements from here.