On the day Governor DeSantis announced Florida’s phase one reopening plan, the news remained positive. That’s especially true if you dig a bit deeper and look at what’s happening in Georgia. Though it’s early, there’s no indication of spikes in cases coming from states like Georgia which began some of the most aggressive reopening measures in the country last week. In fact, not only is Georgia not seeing a spike, Georgia's new case count yesterday was the lowest in a single day since March 8th. 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’s the 7th day for states which reopened last Friday, including Georgia.
Worldwide, there are now 3,222,468 cases, 228,270 deaths, and 961,785 recoveries. In the United States, we have 1,064,572 cases, 61,669 deaths, and 147,411 recoveries.
We experienced over 76,000 additional diagnosed cases and more than 10,000 deaths worldwide Wednesday. That’s a higher rate of new cases and deaths than the previous day. The spike in cases and deaths are predominantly coming from Brazil and Russia. They're the world’s newest hot spots. Russia’s 8th in cases and seeing the fastest growth in the world. In the United States, we had over 28,000 new cases and 2,403 deaths over the past day. The rate of new cases was slightly higher, though well below the trend line and peak, while the rate of deaths declined yesterday.
As newer cases are spiking in countries like Brazil and Russia, we saw an increase in the closed case death rate, breaking the recent, positive trend. With more than 1.2 million closed COVID-19 cases, the death rate increased by 1% to 19%. This is still down from the recent peak of 21%. There’s been a considerable lag in clearly recovered cases in Florida and around the world so there’s room for optimism that this rate will continue to significantly decrease with time. For the month of April, COVID-19 remains the top estimated cause of death in the United States.
In Florida, there are 33,193 cases and 1,218 deaths. We had 347 new cases and 47 deaths in Florida attributed to the coronavirus on Wednesday. Both of those numbers were lower than the prior day totals. In fact, the new case count was the lowest of any day in April. We’re set to leave the month with far fewer new cases being reported than we had coming into it. Governor DeSantis announced phase 1 reopening plan which begins Monday for all counties except Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach.
More than half of all of Florida’s cases currently are in the tri-county area.
- Miami-Dade: 11,927
- Broward: 4,898
- Palm Beach: 2,911
The overall positive test rate in Florida continued to decline on Wednesday reaching a new low. The rate, now 8.8% 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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