First Coast exceeds 4K coronavirus cases, Jacksonville jumps by 207

A vacant downtown Jacksonville might have helped keep coronavirus from infecting the homeless population. Photo by Drew Dixon.

Jacksonville’s coronavirus case count exceeded 200 new cases for the second day in a row Saturday while the five-county First Coast region of Florida has now surpassed 4,000 cases.

Duval County now has 2,902 cases of coronavirus, according to the Florida Department of Health’s Sunday report. That’s up 207 cases from Friday, but not  a single-day record for Jacksonville. That record was set on Friday when there were 211 additional cases over Thursday’s figure.

As the region’s largest metropolitan area, Jacksonville accounts for about 75% of Northeast Florida’s total caseload.

Jacksonville has posted triple-digit increases for most of the past week. But an equally alarming figure is the percentage of positive test results from the exams administered. Friday and Saturday’s positive test rates were at nearly 10% each day.

Prior to the past week, positivity rates rarely rose above 4%. Every day since Monday, that figure was above 5%.

Jacksonville’s death toll remained unchanged  at 60 and there was only a slight uptick in hospitalizations.

St. Johns County showed an increase of 28 new cases of coronavirus Saturday. That county has shown an increase of about 30 cases each day for about the past week.

Clay, Baker and Nassau counties recorded only slight increases in caseload.

Across the Northeast Florida region, there are now 4,013 cases, 104 deaths and 510 hospitalizations attributed to COVID-19.

There are 97,291 total cases of coronavirus across Florida with 3,161 deaths and 13,037 hospitalizations.