Scott Powers
Orange County on Monday morning became Florida’s fourth county and first outside of South Florida to see its COVID-19 caseload top 1,000.
In the latest coronavirus report from the Florida Department of Health, Orange saw an increase of 75 cases since Sunday morning, bringing its total cases to 1,017.
To date, only Miami-Dade County (now with 7,241 through Monday morning,) Broward County (3,105,) and Palm Beach County (1,691) had reached that level, and all three did so more than a week ago.
Behind Orange are Hillsborough County with 790 cases, Duval County with 692, and Lee County with 632.
The caseload in Orange County has increased about 37% in a week, which actually is a much slower pace than the county had seen the previous two weeks, when its caseload was doubling every few days. Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings instituted a curfew on March 20 and a county-wide stay-at-home order on March 26.
In Orange County, the first case was reported on March 13. The county reported its 100th case on March 26, its 200th case on March 29, and its 500th case on April 2.
In Orange County, 146 people have been admitted to hospitals with COVID-19, and 13 have died.
For most of the past couple of weeks, Orange County’s leadership, notably Demings and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, have been striving to develop a regional approach to addressing the virus, because many of the hospital systems and other health care infrastructure are regional, as is the Orlando economy.
Elsewhere around Central Florida, Osceola County’s caseload increased by 12 from Sunday morning to Monday morning, to 333 COVID-19 patients; Seminole County’s by 16, to 257; Volusia’s by 13, to 212; Lake’s by seven, to 155; and Brevard’s by 15, to 140.
Brevard County added the death of a 91 year old woman.
Overall, 36 have died from COVID-19 in central Florida including 13 in Orange, seven in Volusia, five in Brevard, five in Osceola, four in Lake and two in Seminole.
Demings and Dyer have said they expect the region to reach its worst point in the coronavirus crisis in late April or early May. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation‘s widely-cited model now projects Florida’s worst will come around April 26.
