Jacksonville crosses 75,000 COVID-19 cases

Jacksonville has tallied 75,178 coronavirus cases since the outbreak began in March, according to Florida Department of Health data released Monday.

While 75,000 was a dubious threshold, Jacksonville infections increased by just 268 in a single day. It is only a one-day measure but that’s well below the usual jumps that Jacksonville has seen in recent weeks when some of those case counts increased by more than 500 or even 1,000 per day.

Monday’s figure does represent a spike of nearly 5,000 cases in one week in Jacksonville when there were 70,905 infections on Jan. 11.

The number of deaths in Jacksonville now stands at 816, an increase of 24 just since Friday when there were 792 deaths caused by COVID-19 in the city.

The positivity test rate for coronavirus has dipped below 10% in the past three days and four out of the past five days in Jacksonville. Friday saw that figure at 10.06% after an 8.91% rate the day before.

Across the five-county First Coast region, there are now 115,063 total infections. Another 1,291 people have died from the pandemic in Northeast Florida. The collective positivity test rate stands at 12.8% across the area.

In other individual counties in Northeast Florida:

— Johns County recorded 16,673 infections with an increase of two deaths for a total of 140 and a 13.55% positivity rate.

— Clay County now has 14,084 cases of COVID-19 while holding steady on the number of deaths at 221 and a positivity rate of 10.39%.

— Nassau County has tallied 6,292 cases, remained at 73 deaths and posted an 18.11% positivity test rate.

— Baker County now has 2,8136 infections of coronavirus, remained at 41 deaths and recorded a positivity rate of 13.43%.

Across Florida, there are now 1,579,281 cases of coronavirus with 24,657 fatalities caused by the outbreak.