First Coast region breaks 12,000 mark for coronavirus cases

Jacksonville and other areas of the First Coast with nonprofits are getting a boost in financial help because of the impacts from the coronavirus. Image via Drew Dixon.

The five-county First Coast region broke 12,000 cases of coronavirus Sunday, but the pace of additional infections seems to be slowing down, at least temporarily, according to Florida Department of Health data released Monday.

Early week lulls have become commonplace as fewer people obtain testing over the weekend. Duval county returned just 2,072 tests Sunday and 2,615 Saturday, down from highs at or near 4,000 earlier in the week.

There were 12,318 cases of COVID-19 as of Sunday, up 441 cases over Saturday’s figure in the Northeast Florida region. That single-day jump for the entire First Coast is lower than some of the single-day increases in Jacksonville alone in recent days on the First Coast.

Still, Jacksonville saw 341 new cases in Sunday’s data arriving at 9,487 cases.

Jacksonville still had a high rate of positive test results. Some 14% of all tests administered came back positive among Sunday’s figure. That’s not as high as Duval County’s peak of 17% recorded Saturday. Jacksonville’s average seven-day positivity rate is still staggering at 15.1%.

St. Johns County  recorded 58 new cases Sunday, arriving at 1,383.

St. Johns’ positivity rate Sunday was 10.6 %, lower than the 12% seven-day average.

Clay County added 26 new cases Sunday arriving at 1,017.

Baker and Nassau counties showed only slight upticks in cases.

There were no new deaths Sunday and hospitalizations showed only slight increases on the First Coast.

Across Florida, there were 206,447 cases of COVID-19 Sunday, 3,778 deaths and 16,045 hospitalizations.

Editor’s note on methodology: The Florida Department of Health releases new data every morning around 10:45 a.m. The total number reported in those daily reports include the previous day’s totals as well as the most up to date data as of about 9:30 a.m.

Florida Politics uses the report-over-report increase to document the number of new cases each day because it represents the most up-to-date data available. Some of the more specific data, including positivity rates and demographics, considers a different data set that includes only cases reported the previous day.

This is important to note because the DOH report lists different daily totals than our methodology to show day-over-day trends. Their numbers do not include non-residents who tested positive in the state and they only include single-day data, therefore some data in the DOH report may appear lower than what we report.

Our methodology was established based on careful consideration among our editorial staff to capture both the most recent and accurate trends.