If you’re looking for optimism you can find it. 31 states, including Florida, are on track to enter phase one reopening this week. Importantly, though it’s early, there’s no immediate indication of spikes in cases coming from states like Georgia which began reopening measures last week. While the virus can incubate for up to 14 days according to the CDC and WHO, the average incubation period monitored has been five days. Today is the 6th day for states which reopened last Friday. Additionally, Pfizer announced they believe a COVID-19 vaccine could be ready by this fall for use on an emergency basis. This is the earliest timeline we’ve heard from a major manufacture.
As of now, there are 3,146,200 cases, 218,139 deaths, and 961,785 recoveries worldwide. In the United States, there are 1,035,765 cases, 59,266 deaths, and 142,238 recoveries. We experienced over 73,000 additional diagnosed cases and more than 6,400 deaths worldwide Tuesday. Fewer new cases but more deaths than the previous day. There’s improvement around much of the world, however, cases are continuing to increase in Brazil and Russia. They're the world’s new hot spots. Russia’s 8th in cases and seeing the fastest growth in the world. In the United States, we had over 25,000 new cases and 2,463 deaths over the past day. After reaching a two-plus week low in both categories on Monday, both of those totals rose on Tuesday.
We had 708 new cases and 83 deaths in Florida attributed to the coronavirus on Tuesday. Both of those numbers were higher than Monday’s totals, including Tuesday becoming the deadliest day for the virus in Florida. Less than ideal news as we’re expecting to hear about phase 1 reopening plans from Governor DeSantis today. Nevertheless, the new case count is still part of a longer-term trend of fewer diagnosed cases. After a spike in new cases last Thursday, the news has considerably better since and the peak day for new cases remains April 3rd. This supports the notion that last Thursday’s spike in cases was an outlier and the longer-term trend which suggests we’re well past the peak in Florida looks likely to be a reality.
Florida remained 8th in the country in total cases and 10th in deaths. As of this entry, there are 32,846 cases and 1,171 deaths in our state. The tri-county area is still the highest.
- Miami-Dade: 11,831
- Broward: 4,847
- Palm Beach: 2,877
The overall positive test rate in Florida continued to decline on Tuesday reaching a new low. The rate, now 8.9% since testing began, is well lower than the peak of 11% and continues to drop as testing continues to increase. Great signs. 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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