Florida Surpasses 70,000 Coronavirus Cases

CORAL GABLES, FL — The confirmed number of coronavirus cases in Florida surpassed the 70,000 mark on Friday as state health officials reported 1,902 new cases of the virus in the previous 24-hour period.

Speaking on the campus of the University of Miami, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis attributed much of the increase in cases to the state's prisons and agricultural community.

"I think the number one outbreak we've seen is in the agricultural communities," the governor said. "There was just a big case in north-central Florida. There was a watermelon farm ... These are workers that are working close together. Once one gets it, it tends to spread very rapidly throughout those areas."

The governor also pointed to the expanded availability of testing as another reason for the jump in new cases.

"It's important for people to understand who is being tested now compared to who was being tested in March and early April when we had kind of our peaks then," DeSantis said. "The clinical consequences are almost entirely borne by the people that are 65 and older, not entirely, but if you look, 85 percent of the COVID-related fatalities in Florida are age 65 and above."

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DeSantis pointed to a 13 percent decrease in hospitalizations related to the new coronavirus in Miami-Dade County since May 24. Miami-Dade is considered the epicenter of Florida's outbreak along with nearby Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Florida's death toll since early March inched closer to the 3,000 mark with 10 counties reporting 30 new deaths on Friday over the previous 24-hour period. Broward County reported one fewer death than previously reported.

That compares to 47 new deaths Thursday, 36 on Wednesday, 54 new deaths Tuesday, 12 on Monday, 12 on Sunday, 28 on Saturday, and 53 new deaths last Friday.

State health officials reported 135 new hospitalizations across Florida over the previous 24-hour period.

The total number of cases in Florida climbed to 70,971 from 69,069 cases a day earlier. The state's death toll rose to 2,877 from 2,848 a day earlier.

Miami-Dade reported 11 new deaths Friday. Palm Beach County reported nine new deaths.

Hillsborough County reported three new deaths. Alachua County reported one new death as did Calhoun County, Flagler County, Martin County, Pinellas County, Polk County and Washington County.

Miami-Dade reported 20,872 cases of the virus Friday. Nearby Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale, reported 8,589 cases. Palm Beach County, which includes West Palm Beach, reported 8,209 cases.

Florida had a 5.3 percent positive test rate for the virus based on a total of 1,336,895 tests that had been administered as of Friday. The number of hospitalizations in Florida increased to 11,706 from 11,571 a day earlier.

Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, reported 3,295 cases. Orange County, which includes Orlando, reported 2,773 cases.

In an attempt 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.

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

Here is the most recent data: