We ended last week with a lot of generally optimistic trends. The potential peak having been crossed nationally, an extremely encouraging study result for a treatment involving a proven Ebola fighting drug. President Trump’s three-phase plan for reopening the country which several states already in a position to act of the first phase. If you’re looking for better news, you can find it. We have data-driven progress evidenced across the country as May has the appearance of being a much better month for us and likely people around the world.
Right now, worldwide, there are 2,414,095 cases, 165,153 deaths, and 629,390 recoveries. In the U.S., we have 764,265 cases, 40,565 deaths, and 71,012 recoveries. In Florida, we have 26,314 cases and 774 deaths, the specific Florida recoveries aren’t disclosed.
We’ve experienced over 229,000 additional diagnosed cases and over 18,000 deaths worldwide since Friday, showing that while better news is out there, we're not out of the woods with the virus yet. In the United States, we had over 86,000 new cases and greater than 5,900 deaths. For the month of April, COVID-19 remains the top estimated cause of death in the United States.
The most disconcerting aspect of the virus remains the death/recovery rate based on closed cases. More optimistically, new research suggests many COVID cases result in mild symptoms, likely showing we’ll have an overall outcome considerably better than those numbers currently suggest. Much is still unknown about why some are hit so hard by the virus while others aren’t. 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 over time as people begin to recover.
In Florida, we had 2,974 new cases and 106 deaths since Friday. Much like the improving national picture, the latest estimates suggest we’ve passed the peak for COVID-19 deaths in Florida. Overall hospitalizations are now at their highest levels in Florida, with 3,813 COVID-19 patients currently being served. That’s an increase of about 400 over the weekend, though Florida’s hospital system still has about 40% capacity available if needed. Florida remained 8th in the country in total cases and 10th in deaths. Florida’s 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. 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: 3,971
- Miami-Dade: 9,354
- Palm Beach: 2,170
We continue to see a high rate of positive test results in Florida but the news continued to improve through the weekend. To date, 10% of all tests for COVID-19 have come back positive. That’s a decline from 11% at the peak, backing up the idea we’ve crossed the peak in Florida. Still, the further into testing we go, the more likely 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 and safer-at-home declarations.
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