Florida Coronavirus Surge Continues With 12,478 New Cases

TALLAHASSEE, FL — The number of coronavirus cases in Florida continued a weeks-long surge Sunday with 12,478 new cases as health officials reported a total of 350,047 cases in the state, up from 337,569 a day earlier.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said another 30,000 more vials of remdesivir will be arriving in Florida hospitals between Monday and Tuesday. They will help an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 Florida patients. DeSantis said Vice President Mike Pence and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows assisted in procuring the experimental antiviral medicine from manufacturer Gilead Sciences.

“I think it’s shortened hospital stays,” DeSantis said. “It’s probably taken patients who may have ended up in the ICU, but for this, and it probably had a positive effect on mortality as well.”

At one point, the percentage of ICU beds in Miami-Dade County reached 120 percent of capacity though the county was not running out of hospital beds.

“As far as hospital beds and ICU beds and ventilators, there is still capacity,” Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez said on “Good Morning America” Sunday morning. “When we were at 120 percent, we actually had the reserve capacity of over 100 percent to convert rooms into ICUs.”

Gimenez said about 35 people were given civil citations and some businesses were closed in the county for mask or social distancing violations on the first day that a new civil citation was rolled out.

Florida’s death toll rose to 4,982 from 4,895 a day earlier. State officials also reported another 109 non-Florida residents who died in the state.

Twenty-six Florida counties reported 87 new deaths Sunday. That compares with 91 new deaths Saturday (health officials reported 90), 128 new deaths on Friday, 157 new deaths on Thursday, 113 new deaths Wednesday, 132 new deaths on Tuesday, 35 new deaths on Monday and 45 new deaths last Sunday.

Miami-Dade County reported 28 new deaths. Palm Beach County reported 13 new deaths. Neighboring Broward County reported five new deaths.

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Sarasota County reported six new deaths. Pinellas County reported four new deaths. Okaloosa County reported three new deaths as did Orange County.

Collier County reported two new deaths as did Marion County, Pasco County, Santa Rosa County, Seminole County and Volusia County.

Alachua County reported one new death as did Bay County, Brevard County, Charlotte County, Columbia County, Duval County, Escambia County, Hillsborough County, Indian River County, Liberty County, St. Lucie County, Sumter County and Union County.

Florida reported an 11.64 percent positive test rate for the virus Sunday as the number of tests administered in the state surpassed the three million mark with a total of 3,006,290.

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Health officials reported 20,971 hospitalizations from 20,632 over the previous 24-hour period. That represents an increase of 339 more hospitalizations than reported a day earlier.

Miami-Dade, which includes Miami and Miami Beach, reported 84,238 cases of the virus Sunday. Nearby Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale, reported 39,281 cases. Palm Beach County, which includes Palm Beach and West Palm, reported 25,785 cases.

Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, reported 23,706 cases. Orange County, which includes Orlando, reported 23,259 cases.

In an effort to provide as much information to our readers as possible, Patch is publishing the following county-by-county breakdown of the coronavirus cases in Florida’s 67 counties, along with the median age of patients, the number of hospital cases by county and the number of deaths.

Related:

Patch updates this chart once each day based on data provided by the Florida Department of Health. The counties that reported new deaths on Sunday are shown in bold.

Here is the most recent data:

This article originally appeared on the Sarasota Patch