Janelle Irwin Taylor
Hillsborough County confirmed 40 new COVID-19 deaths Wednesday, a record for the county whose mortality rate is roughly half the state’s.
So far, 232 Hillsborough residents have died with COVID-19, just 1% of all reported cases. The state’s mortality rate is 2%.
Statewide there were also a record number of new confirmed deaths Wednesday with 156. The previous record was Tuesday at 133.
Deaths reported on a single day didn’t necessarily all occur on the same day as the county and state health departments often take time to identify deaths associated with COVID-19 cases.
Pinellas County, which has far fewer cases but more deaths than Hillsborough, also posted 17 new fatalities, though the number falls below the 26 reported Monday.
Hillsborough County also added 53 new hospitalizations, 892 total throughout the pandemic, and Pinellas added 42, for a total of 1,041.
Hillsborough County has just 38 of 337 adult ICU beds available, just 10%, as of Thursday. Pinellas County has 14% adult ICI capacity with 42 of 257 beds available, according to the Agency for Health Care Administration.
Hillsborough added 539 new cases of COVID-19 and now has a total of 21,557 confirmed since the beginning of the pandemic.
The county’s positivity rate also remains above 10%, the threshold for which health officials deem worrisome. Wednesday’s rate was 14% and the seven day average is 13.6%.
Fewer tests are being logged in recent days, with Wednesday’s results down for the fourth day in a row. The county returned results one 3,311 tests Wednesday, down from 3,305 Tuesday, 3,499 Monday, 4,728 Sunday and 5,649 Saturday.
Pinellas County added just 288 new cases from Wednesday to Thursday, with 12,368 cases now tallied.
The positivity rate remains below 10% at 9.9% Wednesday and 8.4% over the past week.
Like Hillsborough, fewer tests are being logged. Wednesday’s returns included results from 2,663 tests, the lowest returns in the past week. The high point was Sunday when the county received results for 7,275 tests.
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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.
One comment
Jorge
July 16, 2020 at 3:09 pm
Do these numbers reflect the obscure numbers from earlier this week? Is every single ICU bed mentioned a confirmed Covid patient? Are the deaths noted directly from death certificates which UCOD which instructs UCOD to be Covid although prelimanary illness was present? How many negatives of the total?
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