The news continued to improve Wednesday. Newly diagnosed cases were slightly lower in the US than the prior two days and were 45% lower than the peak day for cases in which occurred April 24th. This despite most of the country being in some state of reopening. The overall trend continues to be promising throughout the country. There continues to be evidence that states are able to begin to reopen while simultaneously reducing the spread of the virus while increasing testing. Outside of the US, Russia now third in total cases, along with Brazil which is now 6th, continue to be the areas of greatest growth and concern.
Worldwide, there are 4,441,891 cases, 298,296 deaths, and 1,668,091 recoveries. In the US, we have 1,430,348 cases, 85,197 deaths, and 310,259 recoveries. In Florida, we have 41,923 cases and 1,779 deaths.
In Florida, we had 479 newly diagnosed cases and 47 deaths over the past day. The news was highly encouraging. After Tuesday brought us the top day for new cases since May 1st, we had half as many new cases yesterday reconfirming the improving trend in new cases statewide. We had the fifth-fewest new cases reported since March 24th on Wednesday with 65 of 67 counties in Florida reopening. It’s now been ten full days since the original 64 counties began to reopen. With an average incubation period of five days for the coronavirus, there's increasing room for optimism for further reopening in Florida.
Florida also improved to 9th in the country in total cases and 10th in deaths. We’ve also tested more aggressively than most states, with only New York having tested more than Florida. More than half of all of Florida’s cases remain in the tri-county area with Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach having the most cases in the state in that order.
The overall positive test rate in Florida continued to improve Wednesday dropping to yet another new low of 7.1%, that's down from the peak of 11%. As a reminder, the newest diagnosed cases are new cases obtained through community spread. This reinforces the importance of adhering to the warnings of public officials including social distancing and wearing masks in public.
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