Nicholas Reimann Forbes Staff Business I’m a news reporter for Forbes, primarily covering the U.S. South.
TOPLINE
Florida on Thursday reported an increase of 10,109 coronavirus cases, a sobering rise as the state continues to deal with a massive coronavirus spike that is now rivaling, in terms of new cases at least, what New York experienced in April
KEY FACTS
The new case load is one of the highest ever reported in a single state, and the highest outside New York, which for now has the single-day record for new cases in a state with its 12,274 cases on April 4.
Florida’s coronavirus spike that took hold through June shows no signs of slowing down, reflecting an unfortunate trend in many large states.
California, Texas and Arizona are also dealing with similar spikes, and the states together are largely contributing to new record daily coronavirus increases in the U.S. as a whole.
But spikes aren’t limited to the biggest states, and are mainly happening in states that were fastest to reopen, leading some to pause reopening further and a few even rolling back earlier reopenings.
That’s the case in Florida, where bars have again been ordered to shut down as Gov. Ron DeSantis has largely attributed the increase in cases to younger people.
The state also reported 325 new hospitalizations and 67 new deaths Thursday, bringing the cumulative total of coronavirus deaths to 3,617.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
The state of Florida doesn’t currently provide very much information on hospital capacity, but that clearly seems to be a concern, at least in the southern part of the state. On Wednesday, the CEO of Miami’s Jackson Health System, which operates one of the largest hospitals in the world, said the system would again be suspending elective surgeries amid a surge in coronavirus patients.
KEY BACKGROUND
With the exception of the southern part of Florida, the state was largely spared the harsh impacts the early surge of coronavirus cases brought to some parts of the U.S. in March and April, leaving DeSantis eager to reopen, which he did and did so quickly when given the chance at the end of April. Case counts remained stable through May, but started rising in June and spiking during the second part of the month. Cases are on the rise again in the already hard hit southern part of Florida, but it’s now central Florida and the Jacksonville area where the spread is the fastest.
