While today’s new hospitalizations and deaths paint a somewhat grimmer picture in Florida, the bright spot continues to be the now-undeniable fact that new infections are getting harder to find.  Tuesday brought just 609 new infections versus 1,124 on Monday, a whopping 45.2 percent decrease.

The decline reinforces the belief that Florida’s first outbreak of COVID-19 peaked about one week earlier. Yesterday, Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida Surgeon General Scott Rivkees both acknowledged the obvious, that Florida’s outbreak appeared to have “plateaued,” and today’s plunge may be an indication that we’re finally on the downhill side of the slope:

Sadly, we set a record for the number of deaths in the state with more than 72 in the past 24 hours. That number may be slightly inflated, as DeSantis acknowledged during a press conference yesterday that “if someone dies WITH coronavirus,” the state records that death as if “they died OF coronavirus.”

The other critical metric is the number of hospitalizations, which are still far below our statewide bed capacity, and not projected to exceed – even in the worst case scenario – more than two-thirds of our 20,000+ available beds. But those daily admissions have been erratic lately, spiking, then plunging, and spiking again, several times. Today it appears we’re reaching the top of another spike, so it woudn’t be surprising if we saw a drop tomorrow:

Keep in mind all this data is just for Florida. Our source for all the data used to generate our charts and on which we base our daily analysis is from the daily PM reports posted by Florida’s Department of Emergency Management.

We also keep the data updated on Google Sheets, which can be reviewed, copied, or commented on for accuracy here.