Florida coronavirus outbreak ‘completely out of control,’ scientist says
Florida shattered the national record for the largest single-day increase in positive coronavirus cases in any state since the beginning of the pandemic, adding 15,299 confirmed cases.
California had the previous record of daily positive cases — 11,694, which was set on Wednesday. New York, the country’s first coronavirus epicenter, had 11,571 on April 15.
In Florida, the positive test rate was below 5% in late May, but in the last week the average has been around 19%.
“It’s outpacing anyone’s ability to control it there. It becomes really challenging, if not impossible, to do contact tracing in a state that has 15,000 cases per day.”
The health system’s ICU capacities in Florida are currently running at about 85% to 90%.
Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach are the top three counties for hospitalizations, with 3,232 people hospitalized — 42% of the 7,542 people in hospitals statewide for coronavirus.
Throughout May and into June, the state reopened much of its economy with some restrictions — and the number of positive cases began rising, but it wasn’t until the last week that the daily death total began rising, too.
Florida reported 514 coronavirus fatalities — an average of 73 per day in the last week. Three weeks ago, the state was averaging 30 deaths per day. Since the pandemic began in March, 4,346 people have died in Florida of COVID-19..
There needs to be a complete shutdown of non-essential businesses, said Dr. Davidson Hamer, a Boston University specialist in infectious diseases.
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