Coronavirus in Florida – March 18th update
Bottom Line: Tuesday brought a whole host of new restrictions to our state including the outright closing of bars and night clubs for 30 days, restaurants ordered to half capacity, along with crowd restrictions at beaches of no more than ten people in a group to reign in spring breakers and more. It also brought many new positive tests as Monday’s expanded testing has started revealing many more Floridians who had the virus but hadn’t yet been accounted for. Nearly as many tests were conducted in Florida on Monday as in the entire time leading up to it. With test results taking 24 to 36 hours, some of those earlier results showed the following...
The range in age for positive tests in our state now ranges from 17 to 89. We're increasingly seeing younger people diagnosed in our state, which is why Governor DeSantis has been especially concerned about Spring Break crowds and aggregation at bars. Broward remains the most active county. 51% of all of Florida’s cases currently are in the tri-county area.
Here’s what’s happened statewide.
- 216 instate cases – 7 deaths
Here’s the outlook in South Florida right now...
- Broward: 55
- Miami-Dade: 43
- Palm Beach: 13
In the early going of testing we’re seeing a really high rate of positive tests in Florida. To date, 21% of all test results for COVID-19 have come back positive. That’s risen 1% percent over the past day. It remains much higher than the guidance provided by the Coronavirus Task Force. Nationally and internationally which have ranged from 1%-4%. There are 1,061 outstanding tests awaiting results, nearly as many as had been conducted in all days previously in Florida – expect these numbers to increase considerably over the next day.