Fla. Shatters Daily Record With 3,207 New COVID Cases

Florida added another 3,207 coronavirus cases Thursday, shattering the previous daily record as the state emerges as an alarming hot spot among places grappling with a resurgence of the disease.

Thursday's new record topped the 2,783 cases reported just two days earlier by the Florida Department of Health, which had been the third record-setting total in less than a week.

There now have been 85,926 coronavirus cases reported in Florida since the outbreak began and 3,061 deaths. The state reported 43 additional COVID-19 deaths Thursday.

Gov. Ron DeSantis said after Tuesday's record high that he had no plans to pull-back on reopening efforts that he launched in May and since expanded.

"We're not shutting down, we are going to go forward, we are going to continue to protect the most vulnerable," DeSantis said, adding, "the negative effects" of shutting down again would be much worse than "any gains you're getting."

The Republican governor has attributed the rise in cases to the state's expanded testing, along with clustered outbreaks involving farmworkers and at nursing homes, where residents and staff have been undergoing increased testing.

But with Florida among 10 states that saw their highest seven day average for new COVID-19 cases this week, a disease model by scientists at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania concludes the Sunshine State has "all the markings of the next large epicenter of coronavirus transmission."

Florida is among 20 states with a steady rise in newly reported cases over the past two weeks.

"We have a growing epidemic in Florida, there's no doubt about it," said Ira Longini, a biostatistician and epidemiologist at the University of Florida.

Longini added that the leap in daily caseloads should not be considered a resurgence of the virus – a factor some public health experts warned could be expected later in the year, particularly during fall and winter flu season.

Instead, he said this increase is still part of the first wave of the illness, and is driven in part by state economic reopening and a lack of effective contact tracing to find and isolate people that may have come in contact with someone testing positive.

"You can't argue that this big increase in cases is entirely due to more tests," Longini said.

After lagging in testing for most of March, April and May, the state has now been regularly topping the public health-recommended level needed to control the virus which, based on population is 31,800 daily tests in Florida.

That mark has been surpassed 10 of the past 14 days, records show.

Several health care advocacy organizations led by United States of Care have been tracking state strategies for combating COVID-19 and also concluded Thursday that expanded testing is not a decisive factor in the increase.

Marta Wosinska, a public health expert at Duke University associated with the tracking project, said that New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island are among several states where testing has climbed in recent weeks even as their daily coronavirus cases have been declining, roughly by half.

She acknowledged that Florida's testing is up, "But you see the cases rising at a much faster rate."

The tracking project also found that Florida has 36% of its hospital beds still available, but only 26% of beds in Intensive Care Units (ICU), both considered in the low range of what's needed.

Florida health officials reported Thursday that 12,577 people have been hospitalized so far with coronavirus, including 1,783 people hospitalized since DeSantis pushed 64 counties into the latest phase of reopening on June 5.

Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, where 51% of the state's coronavirus cases have been identified, remain under tighter restrictions. Broward and Miami-Dade are the only Florida counties to require that face masks be worn in public, but Palm Beach County is considering enacting a similar requirement.

Last week, DeSantis touted plans to reopen schools on campus in the fall, announced that Brevard County will host the AAU Junior Olympic Games in a few weeks, and hailed Jacksonville's selection as the site for a major portion of the Republican National Convention in August.

The decision came after President Donald Trump balked at calls by officials at host site Charlotte, N.C., for a more restrained convention.

Longini at the University of Florida, said that DeSantis seems to be relying on the view that if the most vulnerable population – the elderly and those with underlying health conditions – can avoid contracting the disease, the death toll will remain relatively low.

The governor has pointed to the reduced risk of hospitalization or death among younger or middle-age people who test positive for the virus.

Still, 20% of the state's population is at least age 65, and older Floridians' fear of coming into contact with someone who has COVID-19 is certain to hold down the state's economy, even with reopening, Longini added.

"You don't want to start seeing this kind of almost exponential rise," he said. "It can easily get completely out of hand again."