FL Coronavirus Cases Hit 213,794; Governor Sends Nurses To Miami

MIAMI, FL — The total number of coronavirus cases in Florida rose to 213,794 on Tuesday, an increase of 7,347 over the previous day, as Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he was sending dozens of contract medical personnel to the state's largest public health system in Miami to deal with the influx of new patients.

"We're sending, starting tomorrow, 100 contract medical personnel, mostly nurses, to be able to augment their operations," the governor said of the Miami-based Jackson Health System. "We are standing by to be able to do more as the circumstances warrant."

Jackson Health CEO Carlos A. Migoya warned last week the hospital system would not be able to keep up with the pace of new patients for "three, four, five, six weeks."

DeSantis said the state had also budgeted additional money for contact tracing, though he said it was only a partial solution to the state's coronavirus outbreak.

"It's not as simple as saying you can just contact trace everything, not when you have a largely asymptomatic illness," DeSantis said, noting many young people do not cooperate with contact tracers.

"You do have some informal contact tracing that's gone on with younger people where someone will have a party at somebody's house and someone at that party later tests positive and they tell everyone," DeSantis said.

The governor appeared with Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who ordered a partial rollback of business reopenings in Florida's most populous county following a holiday weekend where the state set an all-time record of 11,458 new cases of the virus on the Fourth of July. As of Thursday, Miami-area restaurants will be forced to limit service to outdoor dining and takeout or delivery with a maximum of four people at any one table while other types of businesses such as banquet halls must shut down completely.

While the governor has resisted a statewide mandatory mask requirement, Miami-Dade residents have recently been ordered to wear masks in both indoor and outdoor public spaces. They also must comply with a nightly curfew to stem the rising tide of new cases.

"We are the county with the most cases, unfortunately," Gimenez said as Miami-Dade cases surpassed the 50,000 mark. "We continue to have a positivity rate of above 20 percent, whereas two weeks ago we were down to 8 percent."

Florida had a 9.4 percent positive test rate for the virus Tuesday as the number of tests administered in the state reached 2,235,937. The percentage of positive cases has been increasing for more than three weeks and the cases are trending younger.

The state's total positive cases rose to 213,794 from 206,447 over the previous 24-hour period as South Florida beaches reopened Tuesday after being closed over the long Fourth of July weekend to slow the spread of the deadly disease.

Many of the new positive cases in the state are of people between the ages of 33 to 37.

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The total number of deaths from the new coronavirus in Florida rose to 3,841 from 3,778. State officials also reported another 102 deaths in Florida involving non-Florida residents.

Seventeen Florida counties reported 63 new deaths Tuesday. That compares with 61 new deaths Monday, 28 new deaths Sunday, 18 new deaths Saturday, 64 new deaths Friday, 65 new deaths Thursday, 46 new deaths Wednesday and 58 new deaths last Tuesday.

Miami-Dade County reported six new deaths. Broward County reported four new deaths. Palm Beach County reported 20 new deaths.

Pinellas County reported seven new deaths. Hillsborough County reported five new deaths as did Lee County.

Manatee County reported three new deaths. Duval County reported two new deaths as did Lake County and Martin County.

Brevard County reported one new death as did Escambia County, Nassau County, Okaloosa County, Polk County, St. Lucie County and Volusia County.

Health officials reported 16,425 hospitalizations, up from 16,045 over the previous 24-hour period. That represents an increase of 380 new hospitalizations, or more than double Monday's increase in hospitalizations.

Miami-Dade reported 51,058 cases of the virus Tuesday. Nearby Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale, reported 22,595 cases. Palm Beach County, which includes Palm Beach and West Palm, reported 17,638 cases.

Those three counties account for 91,291 cases, or some 43 percent of the state's total.

Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, reported 15,362 cases. Orange County, which includes Orlando, reported 14,768 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:

• Most Florida Children Expected To Attend Traditional Schools
• Masks Are Now Required In Lakeland Public Places: Commission
• Patch Survey: Too Soon To Send Kids Back To School
• Coronavirus Confrontation On South Beach Elevator

• Miami-Dade Mayor Reimposes Curfew Amid Coronavirus
• Jackson Health CEO Issues Dire Warning Over Coronavirus Spike

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

Here is the most recent data: