Staff Reports
Tuesday brought 56 newly confirmed deaths and 502 new COVID-19 cases to Florida, raising the state’s death toll to 2,129 and total infections to 46,944.
The 56 deaths, shown by Department of Health (DOH) data, include one non-resident. Now 2,052 Florida residents and 77 non-residents have died with the novel coronavirus.
Of the 46,944 confirmed cases, 45,684 are residents. Another 191 people in hospitals tested positive, meaning 8,744 people have now been hospitalized with COVID-19.
On Monday, gyms were allowed to reopen and restaurants, retail, museums and libraries could raise their in-house capacity to 50%, up from 25% during the initial Phase One Gov. Ron DeSantis has since called a “Phase 0.5.”
Miami-Dade and Broward counties, the state’s two hardest-hit counties, also opened up Monday. Palm Beach County opened up the previous Monday.
In the last 24 hours, 78 people in Miami-Dade County tested positive, raising the overall COVID-19 caseload there to 15,942 people. Twelve people have died since Monday’s report, raising the county’s death toll to 587.
Broward County registered 47 new cases, raising its total to 6,369, and one person died, lifting the death toll there to 304. Palm Beach County now has 4,699 cases after DOH showed 41 new cases along with nine deaths, bringing the total to 295.
However, new cases in the three hot spot South Florida counties make up less than a third of new case statewide. Previously, the three counties were responsible for the majority of new cases.
Six other counties have more than 1,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases including Orange with 1,699, Hillsborough with 1,670, Lee with 1,520, Duval with 1,318, Pinellas with 1,062 and Collier with 1,030.
The DeSantis administration is facing scrutiny from scientists after FLORIDA TODAY reported DOH’s GIS manager, Rebekah Jones, was removed from her role designing, managing and updating the dashboard.
“As a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it,” she wrote in a farewell letter obtained by the paper.
Jones told Florida Politics that the dashboard was taken away from her “per order of the executive office.”
