The seven-day moving average shows the world continues to struggle with the containment of the virus. Exiting the weekend, the daily average is the highest to date worldwide and the trend in deaths continued to rise as well. Right now, there are 14,648,444 cases, 609,008 deaths, and 8,738,317 recoveries worldwide. The same was true within the US, we now have 3,898,550 cases, 143,289 deaths, and 1,802,338 recoveries. In better news, the closed case death rate has fallen to 7% in the United States, equaling the worldwide total and is the lowest of the pandemic to date. The increase in testing combined with improved treatment options for those critically ill is clearly making a positive difference.
In Florida, we have 350,047 cases, 4,985 deaths, and 37,929 recoveries. The news wasn’t exactly good, but it did provide hope that we might have begun to turn a corner over the weekend. Despite daily cases counts above 10,000 through the weekend, the seven-day moving average has dropped slightly for the first time in two weeks with the peak day over greater than 15,000 cases having now happened over a week ago. The same isn’t yet true of deaths which are now an average high of 106 daily in Florida.
South Florida remains the epicenter of the pandemic in Florida. There are 143 zip codes in South Florida which are hotspots including 27 in Palm Beach County, 46 in Broward, and 70 in Miami-Dade. Hospitalization rates remain at their highest levels of the pandemic.
The overall positive test rate continues to rise in Florida, though the positive test rate remains questionable after it was revealed that certain medical labs in Florida only reported the positive results starting around July 4th. It’s currently unclear what the extent of the impact is on the state’s overall numbers and if those labs have since reported all negative cases as well. After reaching a low of 5.2% in early June, the rate since testing began has risen to 11.6% - including testing at greater than 10% positive, the target rate, each day since June 22nd. While more Floridians have been diagnosed between the ages of 25-34 than any other ten-year window, the increase in average age demonstrates spread from younger adults to older adults has recently happened. This reinforces the importance of using proper safety measures like wearing masks in public and socially distancing.
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