Florida Officials Confirm Nearly 9,000 Coronavirus Diagnoses in a Single Day

Florida officials said almost 9,000 cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in a single day this week, according to the Miami Herald.

“A record week of surging coronavirus numbers was only heightened on Friday, as state health officials confirmed 8,942 cases, nearly doubling the previous record of cases reported in a single day, two days earlier,” the article read.

The state’s Department of Health confirmed the cases Friday morning, which brought the state total to 122,960.

The Herald report continued:

The state also announced at least 39 new deaths, bringing the total of COVID-19 deaths north of 3,360. Over the last seven days, Florida has reported 29,163 new cases. That’s nearly a quarter of all the confirmed cases in the state so far.

The alarming case total came on a day of record testing, but the percentage of tests coming back positive remains elevated beyond the 10% threshold recommended by public health experts.

“On Friday, test results for 71,433 people were reported, and 14.74% of those tests came back positive,” the article stated.

Following the announcement, officials banned alcohol consumption at Florida bars in an effort to keep the number of cases from rising even further, according to the Associated Press (AP).

“State officials have attributed much of the new outbreak to young adults flocking to bars after they reopened in most of the state about a month ago, with many of them ignoring social distancing restrictions aimed at lowering the virus’s spread,” the report said.

However, Florida’s high number of positive cases likely stemmed from infections contracted two weeks prior, according to ClickOrlando.com.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “maintains that the coronavirus has an incubation period of two to 14 days before symptoms become apparent, if at all,” the article noted.

Thursday, the CDC reported 2,374,282 total cases of the virus in the United States and 121,809 total deaths.