After a rough weekend with increases in new cases across the county, around the world and here in South Florida, Monday brought some better news. In the US we had the second-fewest new cases we’ve had since May 11th, while seeing a dip below a thousand new diagnosed cases in Florida for the first time in a week. After averaging around 700 newly diagnosed cases daily in Florida in recent weeks, we’ve had a spike in cases since last Wednesday. We’ve averaged more than 1,200 new cases per day over the past six days.
The state has increased its testing capacity by 27% over two weeks ago and cited this as the catalyst for the increases, however, the increase in newly diagnosed cases has been 71% over that same time. This suggests testing alone doesn’t account for the increase. Right now, we have 64,904 cases and 2,715 deaths in Florida. The past six days have also been the six highest days for new cases since the pandemic began in Florida. We’ve seen growth in specific hotspots in Broward, Collier, Hendry, Martin, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties. It’s interesting that there’s not a hot spot anywhere north of Martin County in the state. This seems to dispel the hope that heat and humidity alone might do the trick to eliminate the threat of the virus.
In the United States, there are 2,026,597 cases, 113,061 deaths and 773,505 recoveries. With over 113,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19, it is the deadliest virus in the United States since the 1918 pandemic which killed an estimated 500,000 people.
Despite the most recent news Florida continues to outperform the country. The overall positive test rate in Florida remained at its lowest level 5.3%, less than half of the peak rate of 11%. As a reminder, 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 wearing masks in public.
Photo by: Getty Images/iStockphoto