Florida Coronavirus Cases Top 15,000; 309 Deaths

MIAMI BEACH, FL — The number of coronavirus cases in Florida surpassed the 15,000 mark Wednesday as deaths climbed to 323, up from 296. The number of cases increased by 951 in a 24-hour period to 15,698 in Florida as of Wednesday night.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was joined by Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez and Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber Wednesday outside the Miami Beach Convention Center, which is being converted into a 450-bed overflow field hospital by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

"We hope this is not going to be used. We pray this is not going to be used. But we've got to still plan," the Miami Beach mayor told reporters.

The 500,000-square-foot field hospital at the Miami Beach Convention Center will have 50 intensive care unit beds and can be expanded to hold 1,000 beds if necessary. In addition to contracted medical personnel, the facility will be staffed by 184 members of the Florida National Guard, including 10 physicians, 19 physician assistants, five case workers, five social workers, 25 EMTs, 50 paramedics, 16 registered nurses and a licensed infection prevention specialist.

"This will provide a lot of resources should the need arise to be able to care for patients," DeSantis explained. "This is going to be a facility that will accept the COVID patients. Some of the overflow that's been done in other parts of the country, initially they wanted it for non COVID." Another 200 beds are also being set up at the Pan American Hospital in Miami and 250 more at another field hospital in the Miami area to supplement existing hospital beds.

"Outside of Miami, we have an additional four field hospitals as the need may be," DeSantis said. "We have one that's ready in Broward, another one that can be stood up very quickly in Palm Beach. We're also looking on the west coast of Florida and potentially northeast Florida."

He said the state has 4,300 hospital beds ready to be deployed and more than 150 intensive care unit beds. There are 451 nurses, 15 nurse practitioners and 14 doctors under contract who are ready to deploy.

"I would much rather be prepared for the worst and the worst not come here than not be prepared," DeSantis asserted. "We don't know what a surge may bring but we have to prepare for that so that we are able to take care of people."

Wearing a single blue glove, DeSantis said the state has already distributed more than 3 million N95 and surgical masks, nearly 225,000 face shields, 4.2 million gloves and 185,000 hospital gowns.

"We have more on the way and we're fighting to get more, particularly of the N95 masks," the governor said.

There were 2,082 hospitalizations from the virus in Florida as of Wednesday night. The state had an 11 percent positive test rate out of 143,707 tests.

With 5,461 cases, Miami-Dade County had the most confirmed cases of any of Florida's 67 counties as of Wednesday. Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale, had 2,365 cases. Palm Beach County, which includes West Palm Beach, had 1,224cases.

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Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, had 631 cases. Orange County, which includes Orlando, had 824 cases as of Wednesday.

Martin County reported its first death Wednesday. Highlands County reported two new deaths. Palm Beach County reported five more deaths and Broward County reported two additional deaths.

Citrus County reported three new deaths. Miami-Dade and Polk counties each reported one new death. Escambia and Manatee counties also reported one new death each as did Pinellas County and Sarasota County. Orange County reported two new deaths.

Lafayette County reported its first case of the virus Wednesday, leaving only Liberty County as the sole remaining Florida county that has not reported any cases of the virus.

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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 data twice each day as available from the Florida Department of Health. Here is the most recent data: