Florida records the highest increase in COVID-19 over a day in the last two weeks

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Florida added 15,019 recently confirmed cases of COVID-19 in data released Saturday by the state health department, which is the highest number the state has seen in a single day in the past two weeks.

The last time Florida reported more than 15,000 cases was on Jan. 15, when the state saw 16,875.

Across the state, 1.7 million people have tested positive for COVID-19 and 26,795 have died since the first case was reported on March 1.

A day after positivity rates generally rose, Friday’s tests returned to previous levels with a positivity rate of 6.62% for the state and no county in the area above 10%.

The Florida Department of Health reported Saturday 110 deaths attributed to COVID-19. Four additional deaths in Duval County have pushed Jacksonville to more than 900 deaths since the pandemic began. St. Johns and Putnam reported three more deaths each, Nassau added two and Alachua added one.

The total number of coronavirus patients in Duval County since the pandemic began exceeded 81,000.

Announcements

Although vaccines administered in Florida rose to 1.65 million, supplies remain limited and there is concern that only 5% of residents who have received the first dose are black and 8% are Hispanic. In general, blacks make up 17% of the state’s population and Hispanics make up 23%.

On Friday, the Hispanic State Federation called on DeSantis to “quickly address the cultural barriers” that prevent community vaccination, saying they have been twice as likely to contract the disease as white residents.

Dr. Fred Southwick, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Florida, said the vaccine has not yet been distributed widely enough to harm the number of cases. Instead, he attributed the current decline to the fact that anyone who caught the virus at a Christmas or New Year’s gathering has now been diagnosed.

He said it is still important for Floridians to wear masks and avoid large gatherings, as new mutations reaching the state are more contagious.

Announcements

“We’re not out of the woods,” he said.

His UF colleague, Dr. Glenn Morris Jr., said that while there is no indication that two more contagious mutations in the virus circulating in the UK and South Africa are widespread in Florida, more is needed. tests. He said only variants of 200 weekly samples of 80,000 positive tests are checked. He called on the state to make better use of its private and university laboratories.