Jacksonville coronavirus cases jump by more than 100 Thursday

Downtown Jacksonville. Photo by Drew Dixon.

Reflecting the Florida trend of a huge increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in the past day, Jacksonville saw a similar jump in the number of people infected with the illness.

Duval County recorded 2,309 cases of coronavirus Thursday, according to the Florida Department of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard. That number is up 115 cases from Wednesday.

Wednesday’s Duval County case count was also a dramatic increase from the Tuesday case count of 2,112. The sharp increase in coronavirus cases in Jacksonville is a stunning turnaround for one of the largest metropolitan areas of Florida that in April was among the first to show a flattening of the curve.

By contrast, in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak in March and April, an increase of 50 to 60 cases in one day in Jacksonville was considered significant.

Jacksonville also added another death Thursday. Duval County hospitalizations went from 494 Wednesday to 498 Thursday.

Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry was credited with taking measures in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak for introducing work-at-home executive orders and other precautions designed to prevent the spread of the illness.

But Curry took heat for partially opening beaches in mid-April and from there he began to relax other restrictions including on youth programs and athletics, a decision coinciding with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ executive order on those programs.

Like DeSantis, Curry attributes the spike in cases to expanded testing. He noted there has been high demand for tests at the city’s TIAA Bank Field site. The site saw high capacity Wednesday prompting officials to recommend people use an alternative site.

But in recent messages on his Twitter account, Curry indicated there is concern.

 “We are working with health systems and monitoring the data and will continue to act in the interest of public health,” Curry said.

There have been highly publicized incidents where Jacksonville-area residents who became infected in recent days acknowledged they didn’t take the coronavirus threat seriously and ignored social distancing and wearing masks.

Most notably, 16 women gathered at Lynch’s Irish Pub in Jacksonville Beach on June 6 for a birthday celebration and all of them ended up contracting COVID-19. As a result, Lynch’s closed its doors for business to clean the establishment. Several other restaurants and bars followed suit in Jacksonville beach communities.

Elsewhere in the five-county First Coast area, St. Johns County showed an uptick in the coronavirus case count increasing from 347 Wednesday to 365 Thursday. St. Johns County also added one death Thursday, now totaling seven. The number of hospitalizations increased by three to 51.

Other counties on the First Coast counties showed little change on Thursday. The total number of coronavirus cases for the Northeast Florida region is 3,262 with 104 deaths and 498 hospitalizations.

Across Florida there were 85,926 cases of coronavirus cases Thursday with 3,061 deaths and 12,577 hospitalizations.