FLA. OUTBREAK IS ‘OUT OF CONTROL’
Sunshine State records largest single-day COVID case total of 15,299
Florida’s record-breaking number of coronavirus cases in one day — a staggering 15,000-plus new cases reported on Sunday — is a very troubling sign for the state’s already strained hospitals, infectious disease experts tell the Herald.
The Sunshine State’s outbreak is “completely out of control,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.
“When you have that many cases, it runs the risk of them running into hospital capacity issues,” he said. “We’re already hearing of strained hospitals and ICUs, and now that’s becoming much more precarious.” 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 percentage of positive tests has jumped dramatically, Adalja noted. 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,” Adalja said. “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.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez told CNN on Sunday that his county’s hospitals will soon reach capacity, but he said more beds can be added, including for intensive care.
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 aver