Coronavirus in Florida – April 16th Update
Bottom Line: We had 891 new cases and 43 deaths in Florida attributed to the coronavirus on Wednesday providing a mixed bag of news. Overall new diagnosed cases were higher Wednesday than Tuesday but otherwise lower than all other days in April. Hopefully this is part of a trend towards lower overall diagnosed cases and not a building of new cases within our state. Wednesday brought news of three Hospital systems in Florida (HCA, Cleveland Clinic and Ascension)participating in the Trump administration’s recently announced Dynamic Ventilator Reserve program. The new program creates a federal reserve of ventilators and deploys them across the country to areas of need in the time of a critical shortage. Participating hospitals will contribute unused medical supplies to the reserve and virtual inventories of critical health equipment will be managed by the hospitals in partnership with FEMA and the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Overall hospitalizations are now at their highest levels in Florida, with 3,249 COVID-19 patients currently being served. That’s an increase of greater 200 again yesterday. Florida remained 8th in the country in total cases and 10th in deaths. Florida’s 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. The range in age for positive tests in our state ranges from infants to 104. 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.
Here’s where we now stand in Florida:
- 22,519 cases – 614 deaths
Here’s the count in South Florida right now...
- Broward: 3,363
- Miami-Dade: 8,063
- Palm Beach: 1,816
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. The highest concentration of cases is coming from those between the ages of 45-54.