Monday brought additional information pointing to evidence the coronavirus was active outside of China earlier than the WHO had previously indicated. Taiwan officials released a copy of a letter sent in December to the World Health Organization expressing concerns of a SARS-like virus. Taiwan asked that all relevant information the WHO had on the virus be shared with them, it never was. This has called into further question the role of the WHO in preventing early detection and safety measures from being taken worldwide and comes amid a time President Trump has indicated that the US should pull back on funding for the WHO. The United States pays more for the WHO than any other country including ten times more than China. Worldwide, there are 1,929,121 cases, 119,754 deaths, and 452,838 recoveries.
The overall pace of growth in cases in the United States continues to point to a possible peak this week, in-line with the most recent University of Washington projections, calling for a peak to occur Thursday. As of this entry, there are 587,173 cases, 23,644 deaths, and 36,948 recoveries in the US. Florida’s current peak is expected to be reached on April 26th and right now, there are 21,019 cases and 499 deaths.
The most disconcerting aspect of the virus remains the death/recovery rate based on closed cases. With greater than 572,000 closed cases, the death rate remained at 21% for a ninth consecutive day. The common pattern with the virus spreading is an increase in death rates with vulnerable early on, followed by improving rates over time as people begin to recover.
We had 1,124 new cases and 38 deaths in Florida on Monday. This remains below the peak of greater than 1,300 new cases on April 3rd, which may prove to be the high-watermark for diagnosed cases in Florida in a single day. With concerns currently highest with nursing homes and long-term care facilities in our state, Governor DeSantis has directed the National Guard to deploy to nursing homes and elderly care facilities for preemptive inspections and random testing. Ten teams of four guardsmen are being deployed statewide for the spot checks starting in South Florida.
Overall hospitalizations are now at their highest levels in Florida, with 2,841 COVID-19 patients currently being served. That’s up 200 from yesterday. A new database provided by the Agency for Health Care Administration shows Florida with 59,000 hospital beds and 57% usage of those beds currently.
Florida increased to 8th in the country in total cases and remained 11th in deaths despite being the third most populous state. We’re performing far better than most states on a relative basis. We’re also testing more aggressively than most states, adjusted for population, making the performance of our state even more impressive. This is all encouraging news. Still, more than half of all of Florida’s cases are in the tri-county area with Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach having the most cases in the state in that order.
- Broward: 3,177
- Miami-Dade: 7,459
- Palm Beach: 1,704
We continue to see a high rate of positive test results in Florida. To date, nearly 11% of all tests for COVID-19 have come back positive. The further into testing we go the more likely the newest diagnosed cases are new cases. This reinforces the importance of adhering to the warnings of public officials including social distancing and safer-at-home declarations.
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