Florida reports 15,300 new COVID-19 cases — a record for one day anywhere in the U.S.
Sunday, Florida reported the most new COVID-19 cases any state has in a single day, 15,300.
Sunday’s Florida Department of Health update blew past the previous high, 12,274 by New York on April 4, as reported by the New York Times, by 3,026 or 24.6%. It zoomed past Florida’s previous high, 11,458 on the July 4 report, by 33.5% or just over one-third.
Florida sees more than 12,600 new coronavirus cases as Miami-Dade total hits 67,713
With this massive leap, Florida has had 269,811 cases since the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Florida’s last week: 69,700 cases and an overall pandemic positive test rate that has risen from 9.1% to 10.5%.
The state’s average daily positive test rate of the last seven days was 14.2%. It was 14.5% the week before, and 9.9% the week before that.
Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties accounted for 6,547 of the new cases and 28 of the 45 newly reported deaths, which brought that pandemic total to 4,346.
COVID-19 tracker: Known Florida coronavirus cases and deaths by day and county
That so many cases were reported on a Sunday definitely breaks the statistical trend. Throughout the pandemic, Sunday’s daily case report numbers have tended to be lower than the five days previous because fewer people work in labs and enter data on the weekends. So, Sunday reflects Saturday’s decrease in processing tests and reporting results.
Monday tends to be a reflection of a similar decrease on Sunday, but also a normal amount of data entry happening early Monday.
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South Florida counties
▪ Miami-Dade’s 3,576 new cases and seven deaths put its pandemic totals at 64,444 and 1,139, respectively.
As of Sunday’s Miami-Dade County New Normal Dashboard update, the county was in the red flag zone in three categories: trajectory of daily case counts over a 14-day period, two consecutive weeks of a 14-day rolling positive test rate under 10% (25.64%) and 30% of Intensive Care Unit bed capacity available (5.98%).
All of those numbers have moved in the wrong direction this week.
▪ Broward’s 1,772 new cases set a new single-day high. With another nine deaths, its pandemic totals are 30,025 and 464, respectively. The average daily positive test rate last week was 12.1%. This week, it’s 15.6%.
▪ Palm Beach County saw another 1,171 cases and 12 deaths. Palm Beach has the third most cases in Florida, 21,018, and the second most deaths, 606. Palm Beach’s average daily positive test rate increased only from 13.0 to 13.3.
▪ Monroe County: With another 28 new cases reported Saturday, there have been 572 COVID-19 cases and six deaths.
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Hospitalizations
Florida began reporting current hospitalizations this week. This came a week Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis confirmed to the Miami Herald that the state would start reporting current hospitalization numbers for all counties.
Also, the jump in cases over the last three weeks caused public health experts and the nonprofit COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer group that has become the most prolific coronavirus data collector in the country, to all but scream for current hospitalization numbers as opposed to pandemic total hospitalization numbers. The former, they say, is a clearer way of assessing the pandemic’s severity.
Sunday, the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration dashboard reported 7,390 current hospitalizations from COVID-19, a rise of 152 from Saturday.
In Miami-Dade’s New Normal Dashboard update Sunday, 1,898 people are hospitalized by the novel coronavirus, a number that’s risen for 27 of the last 28 days reported.
Testing
Testing in Florida has seen steady growth since the COVID-19 crisis began.
Testing, like hospitalizations, helps officials determine the virus’ progress and plays a role in deciding whether it is safe to lift stay-at-home orders and loosen restrictions.
The recommended number of daily tests needed varies among experts, but the dean of the University of South Florida’s College of Medicine has told Gov. DeSantis that Florida needs to test about 33,000 people every day.
On Sunday, Florida’s Department of Health reported another 99,003 people have been tested.
To date, 2,576,813 people have been tested in Florida and about 10.5% have tested positive.
