Bottom Line:It’s now been over three full weeks since 64 of Florida’s 67 counties began to reopen, two weeks for Palm Beach County and one week for Broward and Miami-Dade. With the incubation period for COVID-19 being 2-14 days, we now have a time horizon long enough to begin to draw meaningful observations about how our reopening has gone. Most importantly, we’re in a window that should be able to tell us if we can reopen the economy, while increasing testing and still bringing down the trend of new cases.
On May 4th, the day reopening began in Florida, we’d averaged 671 cases of COVID-19 per day in the prior week. Most recently, we’ve had 763 new diagnosed cases. That’s obviously not the news we’d prefer to hear but there is an explanation which suggests the increased case count is higher due to expanded testing rather than additional spread of the virus. On May 3rd, the day before reopening began, 3.6% of COVID-19 tests came back positive. That’s dropped to 2.2% as of the most recent reporting. Here’s another way of looking at what’s happened since Florida began to reopen:
Most recent daily cases up 14%
Positive test results down 39%
It’s been a mixed bag. We’d obviously like to have both numbers lower but thankfully the positive test rate had dropped at a rate that’s nearly three times greater than the increase in case count. This suggests the increase in new diagnosed cases is a byproduct of significantly greater testing taking place rather than an increased spread of the virus. What’s also noteworthy is the decline in deaths attributed to COVID-19 in Florida.
In the week prior to reopening,Florida averaged 44 deaths per day. We’ve averaged 20 per day in the most recent week, a decline of 55%. As Meatloaf would say, two out of three ain’t bad. That’s where we are right now with most of the state in its third week of reopening and beaches and restaurants readying for business all throughout South Florida once again. To be continued...
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