Coronavirus update – June 17th
Bottom Line: This daily update is designed to put everything in perspective with straight-forward facts. No hyperbole, no misinformation, no nonsense. Tuesday produced the highest daily case count of the pandemic yet. That was true around the world, with nearly 143,000 new diagnosed cases and here at home in Florida. Brazil continues to be the world’s biggest hotspot and the US continued to see an increase in the rate of new cases as well with over 25,000 yesterday. This has brought the total number of active cases in the US to a new high of nearly 1.2 million who are battling COVID-19 right now.
Here’s where we stand as of now...
Worldwide:
- 8,274,587 – 446,390 deaths – 4,333,411 recovered
Nationally:
- 2,208,402 cases – 119,132 deaths – 903,042 recovered
Florida:
- 80,109 cases – 2,996 deaths - 15,690 recovered
In Florida, you likely heard about the new record high total of cases in a day. There was a greater than 1,000 new case jump with 2,783 new diagnosed cases on Tuesday. The past six days have all included higher case counts than all prior days since testing in Florida began in March. This has led to Florida having its highest active case count during the pandemic.
South Florida remains the epicenter of the virus with Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County having the most cases in that order. Here are the South Florida hotspots right now–there's one new one in Broward and five in Miami Dade today:
Palm Beach (8): 33407, 33415, 33430, 33435, 33458, 33460, 33461, 33463
Broward (8): 33023, 33024, 33025, 33028,33064, 33068, 33311, 33313
Miami-Dade (25): 33012, 33015, 33016, 33,018, 33033, 33034, 33055, 33125, 33126, 33136, 33139, 33140, 33142, 33143, 33147 33157, 33161, 33162, 33165, 33166, 33169, 33175, 33177, 33,178, 33179
The overall positive test rate also rose in Florida Tuesday with 5.5% of all tests having come back positive. The peak was 11% around six weeks ago, however the low was 5.2% two weeks ago. This illustrates that the spike in cases isn’t due to just an increase in testing but an increase in community spread as well.
This reinforces the importance of adhering to the warnings of public officials including social distancing and wearing masks in public. The average age of a Floridian diagnosed with the virus remains 46. Despite the most recent news Florida continues to outperform the country overall. Florida is 8th in total cases nationally while the state is now 10th in deaths. Florida is the third most populous state. With over 119,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19, it is the deadliest virus in the United States since the 1918 pandemic which killed over 600,000 Americans.