Central Florida tallies another 1,600 COVID-19 cases

Those positive trends seen in recent days in Central Florida’s COVID-19 reports? Put those aside for at least a day.

The greater Orlando area saw increases in caseloads, hospital admissions, deaths, and positive test rates associated with the coronavirus Tuesday, following a weekend that saw most of those indexes heading downward across the region’s six counties.

Day-to-day, the numbers measuring the coronavirus pandemic in the Department of Health’s daily COVID-19 reports can fluctuate for a variety of reasons, including the simple reality that some days are worse or better than others.

Central Florida’s seven-day averages for most indicators of the pandemic had fallen in the past week or more compared with the first couple of weeks of 2021.

With Tuesday’s report showing 1,691 newly-confirmed COVID-19 cases, 68 COVID-19 patients newly-reported admitted to hospitals, 28 deaths newly-attributed to COVID-19, and a positive test rate of 10.1%, all the numbers rebounded somewhat.

One trend that had shown little sign of improving recently: the final and most tragic indicator, deaths.

COVID-19 related deaths are mounting from the surge of cases seen in December that peaked in the first couple of weeks of January in Central Florida.

The latest 28 deaths to be attributed to COVID-19 on Tuesday pushed Central Florida’s running seven-day average to 22. That daily average has been in the 20s since Jan. 15. The indicator was in the high teens for most of the first couple of weeks of 2021, in the low teens for most of December, and in single digits throughout last autumn.

In Orange County, 706 new COVID-19 cases were confirmed Tuesday. Brevard County tallied 226 new cases; Seminole County, 209; Volusia County, 203; Lake County, 176; and Osceola County, 172.

There were 14,161 test results returned Monday for Central Florida residents, a slight increase, but still a below-average sized batch of tests for the region. Among them, 13.6% of the test results in Seminole County came back positive for COVID-19. In Lake County, the rate was 10.9%; Osceola County, 10.4%; Orange County, 9.6%; Brevard County, 9.2%; and Volusia County, 9.2%.

The number of newly-admitted COVID-19 patients to Central Florida hospitals was one of the highest recorded recently, with 68 new patients across the region. Brevard hospitals admitted 23 new patients; Orange, 13; Lake, 12; Volusia, eight; Seminole, seven; and Osceola, five.

The latest deaths attributed to the virus included 13 people who died in Osceola, seven in Orange, five in Brevard, and one each in Lake, Seminole and Volusia.