COVID-19 Cases Unexpectedly Increased Last Week

The State of Florida is no longer supporting the COVID-19 Dashboard and has ceased reporting detailed COVID data by zip code.  So, we won’t be able to share the detailed numbers within our zip code or the estimates for Miami Springs.  Nevertheless, after weeks of declines, we saw a slight increase in the number of new cases of COVID-19 statewide last week. We went from 9,049 new COVID cases the prior week to 12,157 cases last week.  That’s still relatively low, but not what we were expecting.

In fact, fatalities went up last week from 205 fatalities two weeks ago to 292 fatalities statewide last week.

In Miami-Dade County, we saw the number of COVID-19 cases increase from 1,603 two weeks ago to 2,226 new cases last week.  Hopefully, this is just a one week blip and we return to lower numbers this week.

Looking at just Florida resident fatalities (not including visitors & travelers) you can see that 82% of the fatalities were from people 65 and older.  The fatality rate of seniors is at 9.5% or basically 1 in 10 seniors who catch COVID in Florida due succumb to the virus. The fatality rate is dramatically reduced for those 60 – 64 with a 1.9% fatality rate / 98.1% survival rate.  For those 50 – 59, the fatality rate drops to 0.8% / 99.2% survival rate.  For Floridians 40 – 49, the fatality rate falls to 0.3% or a 99.7% survival rate.  If you look at Floridians in their 30s, we’ve only lost 357 people or a fatality rate of just 0.1%.  For those 16 – 29 years old, we’ve only lost 144 young adults over the last year from COVID.  (I suspect this age group has lost more people in the last year from auto accidents and/or drug overdoses than from COVID.  We’ve only lost 7 kids statewide under 16 years of age since the start of the pandemic statewide.   Folks, the message stays the same.  We encourage everybody to get the vaccine to help stop the spread of the virus.  We especially encourage those who are most vulnerable and anyone who interacts with the most vulnerable to get vaccinated.  It’ll help save lives.

God bless you all and stay safe.