On first day of stay-at-home order, Florida passes 10,000 coronavirus cases

State health officials have now confirmed more than 10,000 coronavirus cases after the state added 1,260 cases over a 24-hour period ending Friday.

The report comes as the evening begins on the first day of Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ stay-at-home order. Of the 10,268 total cases, 170 have turned fatal, and 1,334 people have been hospitalized.

With an incubation period of up to 14 days, the exponential growth of COVID-19 cases in the state will continue until the results of the state’s progressively more stringent policies take root.

Each day this month, officials have confirmed more than 1,000 positive individuals. Two weeks ago, they confirmed 142 cases.

On Friday morning, Florida began its stay-at-home order at 12:01 a.m. amid confusion over what local lockdown rules are still valid. Several communities had issued their own orders while the Governor resisted calls to implement a statewide lockdown before finally announcing one Wednesday.

Most of the state’s positive novel coronavirus cases are in South Florida, but the Tampa Bay and Orlando areas have become growing hot spots of the virus. DeSantis has said the first COVID-19 cases could have been in Florida weeks before the first case was confirmed last month and acknowledges community spread is underway in parts of the state.

Miami-Dade County has about a third of the state’s confirmed cases, now with 3,364. And Broward County, with the second-most number of cases, has half that with 1,598. Palm Beach County now has 781 confirmed cases.

Officials have confirmed 589 cases in Orange County and 440 cases in Hillsborough County.

The Department of Health reported seven new deaths Friday evening in addition to 17 first counted in its morning report.

Four additional people died in Palm Beach County after two deaths were verified there this morning. The deceased are a 90-year-old woman, an 87 year-old man, an 85-year-old woman and a 74-year-old woman.

A seventh person, a 70-year-old man, passed away in Orange County after a sixth was confirmed dead in the county this morning. Polk and Sumter counties both had a third person pass away — a 68-year-old man in Polk and an 83-year-old woman in Sumter.

The state has received more than 94,000 test results from federal, state, hospital and commercial labs. The results of at least 1,388 tests are still pending. Some people have been tested multiple times.

Of the positive results, 996 traveled, 1,690 interacted with a confirmed case and 638 did both. The origin of 6,601 cases are still under investigation.

While the disease can be serious and deadly for anyone — the youngest fatality in the state was a 28-year-old man — the most at risk demographics are the elderly and those with underlying health conditions. Of the state’s 10,268 cases, 185 are among long-term care facilities’ residents or staff, up from 132 in last night’s report, constituting a 40% increase in 24 hours.

Fourteen critically ill cruise passengers were hospitalized Friday after a cruise ship docked in Port Everglades. DeSantis and President Donald Trump were both reluctant to let passengers disembark in Florida, but the President ultimately called for the ship and others en route to dock.

And despite securing the stay-at-home order she had demanded from the Governor, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried bashed DeSantis for “failing to lead” during the coronavirus pandemic. She pointed to a follow-up order that amended the stay-at-home order invalidate all local orders conflicting with it.