Coronavirus update - March 5th
Bottom Line: Another day, another mixed bag of news.On one hand we’re still seeing improvement in China at ground zero for the virus. On the other hand, we had thirty new cases in the US reported yesterday and two additional deaths. The best news was here at home in Florida. No new cases.
Here’s where we now stand in Florida:
- 3 cases – 0 deaths – 0 recovered
Nationally:
- 160 cases –11 deaths – 9 recovered
Worldwide:
- 95,509– 3286 deaths – 53,689 recovered
The most disconcerting aspect of the virus at this point is the death/recovery rate. It’s remained static at 6% since the weekend. That’s an extremely high death rate. To put this in perspective – let’s say every American obtained the H1N1 flu virus. Based on its average death rate it’d kill 165,000 Americans.If the COVID-19 virus maintained its current death rate and every American contracted it 19.8 million Americans would die. Again, I’m not at all trying to be or am interested in being an alarmist. Those are just the facts.Hopefully we begin to see progress with the death rate but as you can tell – we now have more Americans who’ve died from the virus than have recovered.
We are currently 9th in the world for cases. The big concern stateside remains nursing homes and related healthcare facilities with anyone who is already medically compromised. As the Florida Health Department has guided, anyone with pre-exiting conditions, including high-blood pressure and diabetes, are at high risk of complications if they were exposed to the virus.