FL Sees Drop In ICU Patients; 30,839 Coronavirus Cases

WESTON, FL — The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Florida climbed slightly higher Saturday to 30,839 but only two Florida counties reported new deaths.

Speaking at the Cleveland Clinic Florida campus in Broward County, Gov. Ron DeSantis said he is seeing encouraging signs with respect to the state's outbreak, including a lower positive test rate among people testing positive for the first time and lower hospitalization rates.

Overall, 9.2 percent of the tests administered in Florida have come back positive, including people who already have the virus but are being retested. A total of 334,974 tests had been administered as of Saturday. The state reported 4,849 hospitalizations from the virus as of Saturday.

"We are at the lowest number of patients in the ICU statewide today than we have been certainly for the last week., I think probably for the last 10 days," the governor said. "You are not seeing people going into the ICU or into the hospitals at the same rate that you had maybe three weeks ago."

Dr. Wael Barsoum, who heads Cleveland clinic Florida, told reporters his doctors continue to find new ways to improve the survival rates for seriously ill patients.

"A couple of the things that we've learned early on," Barsoum said. "For patients that look like they are going to require intubation, early intubation is likely better than late intubation. The second is using lower tidal volumes and prone positioning."

He said Cleveland Clinic's survival rate for patients that have been placed on ventilators is at least 60 percent across all locations.

"In patients that don't continue to improve, that's where the ECMO machine or the artificial lung has come in handy for us," Barsoum said.

The number of coronavirus cases in Florida was up by 306 Saturday over the previous evening as the death toll from the virus rose to 1,055, an increase of nine people who lost their battle with the virus in Florida.

Miami-Dade reported eight new deaths Saturday. Suwannee County reported one new death.

A number of Florida's cases have come from 356 long-term elder care facilities. Health officials said those facilities account for 2,748 cases and 299 deaths involving residents or staff.

Miami-Dade reported a total of 11,005 confirmed cases, more than any other county. Miami-Dade, which includes Miami and Miami Beach, is considered the epicenter of Florida's outbreak along with Broward and Palm Beach. The three counties have accounted for some 60 percent of all of the state's cases.

Nearby Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale, reported 4,659 cases. Palm Beach County, which includes West Palm Beach, reported 2,614 cases.

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Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, reported 1,041 cases as of Saturday. Orange County, which includes Orlando, reported 1,304 cases.

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In an attempt to provide as much information to our readers as possible, Patch is publishing a 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.

Patch is updating this chart twice each day based on data provided by the Florida Department of Health. The counties that reported new deaths Saturday are shown in bold.

Here is the most recent data: