Florida achieves the highest 1-day COVID-19 increase in the last two weeks

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. Florida added 15,019 newly established COVID-19 cases in data released by the Department of Health on Saturday – 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 January 15, when the state saw 16,875.

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

A day after the positivity figures rose across the board, the test numbers of Friday returned to previous levels with a 6.62% positivity figure for the state and no province more than 10%.

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

The number of coronavirus patients in Duval County since the start of the pandemic has risen to above 81,000.

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While vaccinations administered in Florida have increased to 1.65 million, stocks are still limited, and there are concerns that only about 5% of residents who received their first dose are black and 8% Spanish. In general, black people make up 17% of the state’s population and the Spanish are 23%.

The Spanish Federation of the state on Friday called on DeSantis to ‘quickly’ address ‘cultural barriers’ preventing the vaccination of the community, saying they are twice as likely to get the disease as white residents.

Dr Fred Southwick, a specialist in infectious diseases at the University of Florida, said the vaccine had not yet been widely distributed to make a dent in the number of cases. Instead, he attributed the current decline to the fact that someone who contracted the virus during a Christmas or New Year’s gathering has now been diagnosed.

He said it remains important that Floridians wear masks and avoid large gatherings as new mutations arriving in the state are more contagious.

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

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