Kelly Hayes
Hillsborough and Pinellas counties both saw a one-day spike in COVID-19 cases in the latest report from the Florida Department of Health released Tuesday.
Both counties had started trending downward, which was interrupted with Tuesday’s report.
Hillsborough County confirmed 559 new cases on Monday. The county reported only 223 additional cases on Sunday, and 435 on Saturday. Since the start of the pandemic, the county has recorded 101,551 cases of COVID-19.
Monday’s caseload trends on the high side of the overall case decline the county has seen in the past couple weeks. Besides last Friday’s spike at 900 cases, the county has stayed around 450 daily cases in the past week, a sign of case decline in a county that had previously reported nearly 1,000 cases a day at the start of January.
The county did not add any new deaths in its latest report, which confirmed the death toll at 1,317. The county did report six additional hospitalizations.
Pinellas County confirmed 420 new cases on Monday, up from Sunday’s 229 cases and Saturday’s 264 cases. Monday’s jump is a little higher than last week’s average daily caseload, which sat at about 300.
Pinellas reported one new death in the latest report, bringing the county’s death toll to 1,305. The county also saw 17 additional hospitalizations.
A good indicator of the counties’ statuses are shown in the positivity rate, which is the number of coronavirus tests that come back positive. Both have seen a gradual decline in the rates over the past couple weeks.
Hillsborough County reported a positivity rate of 7.81% on Monday, down from last week’s daily average around 8% and 9%. Pinellas recorded a rate of 6.94%, bringing the county closer to its ideal 5%.
A positivity rate of 10% or higher is a mark of mass community spread, and fortunately, both counties have been reporting rates just below that indicator much more often.
As for vaccinations, Pinellas County has vaccinated 78,227 individuals, 17,629 of whom completed their dosage. Hillsborough County has vaccinated 79,786 people, including 22,840 who have received a second dose, according to the latest state vaccination report.
