Today 34 states will be in phase one reopening including Florida with the exception of South Florida. It’s also the day the promising treatment Remdesivir, which recently received emergency FDA approval for COVID-19 patients, is being deployed across the country to those who are hospitalized. Additionally, President Trump indicated progress towards a vaccine for the coronavirus continues to be made and it’s his belief we’ll have one by the end of the year. This comes on back of Pfizer suggesting they could have a vaccine in mass production by the end of the year.
As of today, there are 3,568,217 cases, 248,347 deaths, and 1,157,370 recoveries worldwide. In the United States, we have 1,188,421 cases, 68,602 deaths, and 178,594 recoveries. There were 249,000 newly diagnosed cases and more than 14,000 deaths worldwide due to the coronavirus since Friday morning. That’s a lower rate of new cases and deaths from prior weekends. The newest hotspots remain Brazil and Russia which have essentially seen a doubling of cases over the past week. In the United States, we’ve had over 93,000 new cases and 4,731 deaths since Friday morning. The rate of new cases is steady, while the rate of deaths continues to decline.
We continue to have improved news on the closed case death rate. The closed case death rate remains 18%, its lowest rate since March 26th. This is down from a peak of 21%. There’s a considerable lag in clearly recovered cases in Florida and around the world being reported, so there’s reason to believe that this rate will continue to significantly decrease with time.
In Florida, we have 36,078 cases and 1,379 deaths. We’ve had 2,388 new cases and 111 deaths in Florida attributed to the coronavirus since Friday morning. There’s been a trend established with Thursday producing the highest level of new case counts of any particular day with new case counts dropping through the weekend. That happened again over the past few days, with Thursday’s spike being lower than the two prior weeks – ditto the reported cases through the weekend.
Today is phase one reopening day for 64 of Florida’s 67 counties, with the exceptions, of course, being Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach...although elective surgeries will be allowed to resume in South Florida starting today. Additionally, state parks are opening statewide today. The state received 200,000 antibody test kits over the weekend that will be sent to medical facilities around the state to test health care professionals on the front lines and testing sites across the state continue to have more testing capacity than demand for tests.
Florida remains 8th in the country in total cases and 10th in deaths. We’re the third most populous state. Florida’s performing far better than most states on a relative basis. We’ve also tested more aggressively than most states, with only New York having tested more than Florida. More than half of all of Florida’s cases currently are in the tri-county area with Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach having the most cases in the state in that order.
- Broward: 5,312
- Miami-Dade: 12,775
- Palm Beach: 3,130
The overall positive test rate in Florida continued to drop over the weekend. 8.4% of all tests for COVID-19 have come back positive – that's down from a peak of 11%about two weeks ago. 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, safer-at-home declarations, and wearing masks in public. The average age of someone diagnosed with COVID-19 in Florida is 52.