A 22-year-old man was added Friday to the state of Florida’s count of coronavirus-related deaths in Duval County -- five weeks after he died in a Jacksonville hospital.
The state does not provide the names of individuals who have died from COVID-19 in its database, but William Fowler’s grandmother spoke with News4Jax in August about his death. He fell ill and went into a hospital with shortness of breath and died about a week later -- on July 31 -- from coronavirus complications, hospital records show.
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The date listed by the state for when the 22-year-old was first reported to have COVID-19 (July 25) matches Fowler’s details. No one else his age has been added to the count of deaths for Duval County.
Infectious disease experts have cautioned that the death rate typically lags behind the infection rate because someone who dies of COVID-19 complications typically has been sick about 7-10 days.
But another issue complicating the data is the delay from when a person dies related to COVID-19 to when that person’s death is added to the state’s count. It can often take weeks -- in Fowler’s case, well over a month -- for the death to be reported by the state.
Such delays in reporting are one reason state leaders push current hospitalization numbers and the rate of positive cases as better markers for how the state is doing in the battle to flatten the COVID-19 curve.
As of Thursday, Florida’s percent positivity for new cases was 5.10%, according to data reported Friday by the state health department. Florida added another 3,198 cases to reach 640,211 confirmed cases of coronavirus since the pandemic began.
As Florida begins the process of reopening long-term care facilities across the state to visitors, Northeast Florida reported another three COVID-19 related deaths Thursday in long-term care facilities: one in Duval and two in Clay County.
Removing outlier data from a massive Quest labs data dump on Tuesday, Florida continues to average just under 3,000 new cases a day over the last week.
Statewide, Florida added 103 deaths to bring the state’s total to 11,903 since the pandemic began. The 22-year-old’s death was the only one added Friday in the 11 counties News4Jax has been tracking.
County-by-county breakdown for Northeast Florida
Florida health officials announced Tuesday before releasing the daily update that the state has severed ties with Quest Diagnostics, one of the country’s largest health testing providers, after the company failed to submit timely results of 75,000 COVID-19 test results, some dating as far back as April.
Gov. Ron DeSantis called the company’s failure “egregious.”
The company blamed the delay on “technical issues,” saying in a statement that “the issue has since been resolved.”
The company said there were no unusual delays in notifying people of their test results.
Florida and Duval County’s daily COVID-19 case increases
Notwithstanding Tuesday’s outlier jump in cases from the Quest dump, Florida’s daily case increases seem to have leveled off somewhat as school districts across the state settle in to the new school year and long-term care facilities prepare to welcome visitors for the first time in months.
Recommendations from a panel tasked with coming up with new rules for long-term care visitation include allowing every resident to designate two “essential” caregivers and two “compassionate” caregivers who would have access to the residents.
In terms of general visitation, residents will be allowed to designate up to five general visitors, though no more than two will be allowed to visit at a time.