This daily update is designed to put everything into perspective with straight-forward facts. On one hand, the news based on sheer numbers looked gloomy on Monday. The US crossing the 10,000th death threshold, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s condition leading him to intensive care, not the best headlines. On the other hand, there’s increasing optimism that we’re seeing the rate of spread slow across the world including right here in the United States. This included another day of a slowing trend in New York, which accounts for more than a third of all US cases, along with new modeling showing earlier peaks in the United States, including in Florida. Given that Surgeon General, Dr. Jerome Adams had prepared us for potentially the worst week of our lives, the start of it could have been worse.
Right now in Florida, we have 13,629 cases and 254 deaths. In the US there are 367,650 cases, 10,943 deaths, and 19,810 recoveries. Around the world, there are 1,349,660 cases, 74,816 deaths, and 286,664 recoveries.
We experienced more than 73k additional cases worldwide Monday, with over 30k new cases in the US and over 1,300 deaths. The most disconcerting aspect of the virus remains the death/recovery rate based on closed cases. The death rate remained at 21% for a second consecutive day. This after having reached a low of 6% about a month ago. We’ve seen the death rate rise as the reach of the virus grows. 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.
As of this entry, we’ve had 1,279 new cases and 33 deaths in Florida and we remain 7th in the country in total cases and dropped to 10th 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. Additionally, The University of Washington coronavirus model, which has been the most widely used by public officials, now projects the virus peaking in Florida on April 21st, that’s nearly two weeks earlier than last week’s model. There’s evidence that the precautions we’ve been taking are having a positive effect on the curve of the virus.
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: 2,075
- Miami-Dade: 4,671
- Palm Beach: 1,046
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. The highest concentration of cases is coming from those between the ages of 45-54.
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