As we’re readying for Florida’s phase one reopening on Monday, with the exception of Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach Counties, Michigan isn’t. Their governor extended the stay-at-home order through May. With May underway we’re beginning to see a wide divergence in policy across the country. At least 31 states will be in phase one reopening by Monday. Related, on Thursday Dr. Anthony Fauci warned states to not “leapfrog” the federal guidelines, outlined in the President’s 3-Phase reopening plan. You have to really wonder about states like Michigan writing off the entire month of May. The guidelines operate in a series of 14-day timelines.
Right now, worldwide there are 3,318,448 cases, 234,253 deaths, and 1,048,430 recoveries. In the United States, we have 1,095,304 cases, 63,871 deaths, and 155,737 recoveries. We experienced over 95,000 additional diagnosed cases and more than 5,000 deaths worldwide Thursday. That’s a higher rate of new cases but about half the deaths of the prior day. The spike in cases and deaths are predominantly coming from Brazil and Russia. Notably, Russia’s Prime Minister has become the latest prominent politician to contract COVID-19. In the United States, we had over 30,000 new cases and 2,202 deaths on Thursday. The rate of new cases was slightly higher, though well below the trend line and peak, while the rate of deaths continued to decline yesterday.
In Florida, we have 33,690 cases and 1,268 deaths. We had 497 new cases and 50 deaths in Florida attributed to the coronavirus on Thursday. Both of those numbers were slightly higher than the prior day totals though the longer-term declining trends are still intact. Now we head for phase 1 reopening on Monday in 64 of Florida’s 67 counties, with the exceptions, of course, of Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach, although elective surgeries will be allowed to resume in South Florida next week.
Florida remained 8th in the country in total cases and 10th in deaths. Florida’s 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. Only New York has 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.
- Miami-Dade: 12,063
- Broward: 4,953
- Palm Beach: 2,963
The overall positive test rate in Florida remained 8.8% on Thursday, equaling the lowest rate since testing began and is well lower than the peak of 11%. As a reminder, the further into testing we go, 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.
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