LOCAL: Florida reports 37,439 confirmed coronavirus cases.
Florida officials reported Tuesday the number of coronavirus cases in the state has reached 37,439. At least 1,471 people have died.
South Florida and the nation have crossed some new thresholds on cases and deaths.
Miami-Dade County has had more than 400 deaths, and Broward and Palm Beach counties each have had more than 200 deaths. The nationwide death toll passed 70,000 on Tuesday and in New York State exceeded 25,000.
State reports show Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties accounted for 22,106 cases as of Tuesday, an increase of 320 over the previous 24 hours. There have been 827 deaths in the three counties, an increase of 45 from the day before.
In Miami-Dade County, where the bulk of the outbreak in the state exists, there are 13,224 cases ,the Florida Department of Public Health said. There have been at least 407 deaths in Miami-Dade County — 29 more than the state reported on Monday.
Miami-Dade County has 35% of the state’s cases and 28% of the deaths, but just 13% of Florida’s population.
The 64 counties outside southeast Florida began Phase 1 reopening on Monday.
Rate of positive tests declines
As testing has increased, the percentage of test results that have come back positive has declined, a metric Gov. Ron DeSantis emphasized Tuesday at a news conference in Sarasota.
Out of what he described as a “massive batch” of 23,884 test results received on Monday, “it only yielded 589 new Florida cases.” DeSantis said the percent positive — “something we track very closely” — was 2.61%, meaning more than 97% came back negative.
He said Florida has been below 6% for about two weeks, in contrast other places where he said 40% to 50% are coming back positive. “I think that that’s a good trend,” the governor said.
Multiple factors could be at play, including increased testing in Florida, which takes in a larger population; less testing in some other places, so people most likely to be infected get tested; and a lower infection rate in Florida than elsewhere.
The Department of Health reports 467,553 total tests have been performed in Florida, with 37,439 positive and 428,252 negative. The average since the begin
ning of coronavirus testing is 8%, the agency reported.
Projections
A widely cited model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, released an update late Monday that projects nearly 4,000 deaths in Florida and nearly 135,000 deaths in the U.S.
The numbers are more than double projections from a week ago before several states, including Florida, began lifting stay-at-home orders.
The new models run through Aug. 4 and don’t show an end to daily deaths. For Florida, the projection is for 3,971 deaths with a range between 1,991 and 11,269. For the U.S., the projections is now 134,475 with possible range of 95,092 to 242,890.
Earlier versions had projected topping out at around 1,900 for Florida and 60,000 for the country. The number of deaths nationwide reached 70,000 on Tuesday.
Bigger picture
The coronavirus death toll in the United States stood at 70,115 on Tuesday afternoon, including at least than 25,073 victims in the national hot spot of New York. The country’s total number of cases is approaching 1.2 million.
The Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center reported the worldwide total of cases is greater than 3.6 million and more than 250,000 have died.
The United States has 4.3% of the world’s population and 32.8% of the world’s cases.