JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Florida reached yet another grim milestone Wednesday in the ongoing battle against the coronavirus pandemic: more than 10,000 residents and visitors to the state have died related to COVID-19, according to data from the state health department.
The state added another 174 coronavirus-related deaths in Wednesday’s data, eight of those in Northeast Florida counties. Florida has now reported 10,067 deaths of residents and non-residents related to COVID-19 since the pandemic began. That represents about 1.7% of all coronavirus cases confirmed in the state.
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Coronavirus deaths typically occur weeks or more after the disease is contracted and diagnosed. And the deaths reported in each day’s state data did not necessarily occur in the last 24 hours as the deaths often take many days to be reported to the state.
Three men died in Columbia County (ages 85, 76 and 71) to bring the county’s total to 29 deaths. Duval is now at 232 deaths with the addition of two more in Wednesday’s data. Alachua County also added two deaths to reach 31 and an 87-year-old man died in Clay County, pushing the county’s total to 70 deaths.
Across the 11 Northeast Florida counties News4Jax has been tracking throughout the pandemic a total of 485 deaths related to the coronavirus have been reported since March.
According to the Associated Press, since Aug. 1, Florida has been averaging 150 coronavirus deaths per day, which would make the disease the state’s No. 1 killer — cancer and heart disease each kill about 125 people per day on average, according to the state health department.
Overall, the state continued its trend of lower numbers of added cases with 4,115 additional cases reported Wednesday. The state has now reported a total of 584,047 cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
The number of people being treated in Florida hospitals for COVID-19 has been declining since highs above 9,500 on July 23. The number of patients in the late morning Monday stood at 5,657, according to a tally posted online by the state.
Gov. Ron DeSantis focused on the declining cases and hospital numbers during brief remarks in Panama City on Monday.
“I think that they are durable — they are lasting now for many weeks,” he said.
Daily COVID-19 cases reported in Florida and Duval County
The statewide positivity rate for testing ticked down slightly to 7.08% on Tuesday.
Common symptoms of COVID-19 include fever, cough, breathing trouble, sore throat, muscle pain, and loss of taste or smell. Most people develop only mild symptoms. But some people, usually those with other medical complications, develop more severe symptoms, including pneumonia.