State health officials reported 689 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, Sunday, bringing the statewide total number of cases to 31,528. According to the latest update from the Florida Department of Health, the number of coronavirus-related deaths increased by 18, yesterday, for a total of 1,074 fatalities.
Florida officials count a total of 4,957 hospitalizations including patients currently being treated, those who have died in hospital, and people who have recovered from the virus. Of the 346,365 tests that have been performed in Florida so far, 9.1% have been positive for COVID-19.
2,748 coronavirus cases in the state have been identified in long-term care facilities like nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
Here in Southwest Florida, Lee County reports 961 cases and 37 deaths. Collier County has documented 552 cases and 15 deaths. In Manatee County there have been 508 cases and 42 deaths. Manatee County has the highest death toll among counties in the Southwest Florida region.
In Sarasota, health officials report 321 cases and 32 deaths. Charlotte County has seen 203 cases and 14 deaths. Hendry County has had 65 cases and 2 deaths. And in Glades County there have been 6 reported cases and 1 death.
Florida’s stay-at-home order is set to expire Thursday, April 30, but Gov. Ron DeSantis hasn’t said yet whether he’ll extend it. DeSantis told reporters, Friday, he’d look into the issue carefully and move into “phase two” of the state’s coronavirus response in a “thoughtful way.”
“It does not need to be any specific date because, I think that, if you do it right, then we’ll continue to be able to build off this and be able to get to a place where people can get back on their feet and part of that is, you just want to do what makes sense,” said DeSantis.
Phase two will focus on reopening businesses and parts of the economy. Over the weekend, state officials invited the public to weigh in on reopening Florida. Gov. DeSantis says such feedback will be a "critical component" for his Re-Open Florida Task Force.
Rushing to reduce a massive backlog of claims created as businesses shuttered due to the coronavirus, Florida’s unemployment agency announced Friday that it had processed more than 31% of unemployment claims, with payments of up of $275 dollars a week going out to 22% of the applicants.
However, residents continue to express frustrations about being cut off from the state’s online CONNECT unemployment system and not being able to get through to call centers for assistance.
The Department of Economic Opportunity also took the CONNECT system offline Friday, and it has remained unavailable to Floridians until this morning, April 27.
Department of Management Services Secretary Jonathan Satter, who was put in in charge of the system earlier this month, said Friday the agency worked all weekend to process applications that had already been filed, adding staff can do that more quickly when the website is down.
“We needed all the processing power we could get to process payments,” said Satter.
“We have a number of large batch jobs that were ready and rather than place a lot of drain on the system today (April 24) and over the weekend, we said ‘Let’s take it down. Let’s process as many as we can.’”
With the main site down, the state has made a second system available for people to apply and the Department of Economic Opportunity is still accepting paper applications.
However, claimants were not able to check for updates to their status this past weekend. The state has now processed more than 610,000 claims, out of more than 800,000 confirmed unique claim submissions. In total, nearly 210,000 claimants have been paid more than $200 million dollars.
Gov. DeSantis said the statewide problems with unemployment claims -- were inevitable. During a press conference in Orlando, Sunday, DeSantis said the $77 million flawed system was not designed for hundreds of thousands of claims at a moment's notice and that it was bound to crash.
“This has been a tsunami that this system was not built for. And look, this system is a bad system and it was overpriced,” said DeSantis.
“I don't know why they paid so much money for, but I would also say even if you built a perfect system six months ago, no one would sit down and say, well, you should maybe plan on the economy just voluntarily ceasing.”
DeSantis said the state brought in 100 new servers to expand the filing capacity. Some people have now gone more than a month without benefits.
As state leaders look at what it would take to help get Floridians back to work and school, Gov. DeSantis said he thinks testing will be a big part of the equation. He’s pushing to make sure COVID-19 test results come back as quickly as possible. He’s doing that by purchasing tests that offer more rapid results, but also by opening more sites and contracting with more testing labs.
“We have two contracts in place, with two new labs that will increase our lab capacity by 18,000 samples per day,” said DeSantis.
“We’re told perhaps a 24-hour turn around, but I’ve learned in this process that we need to do as good as we can so we’re thinking more like 24 to 48 hours.”
DeSantis said another goal is making testing more widely available. He says walk-up sites, like the one that opened on the Florida A&M University campus over the weekend will help with that.
Gov. DeSantis announced, Friday, that licensed pharmacists will be allowed to order and administer COVID-19 tests. He says ensuring easy access to testing is an important part of the state’s recovery process.
“Allowing licensed pharmacists to be able to do this expands our capacity, makes testing more accessible for people and I think ultimately is the right thing to do,” said DeSantis.
He said if people can get tested, that means they’ll know whether they need to isolate to avoid spreading the virus. The state is also looking into procedures that would allow patients to test themselves in their homes and then ship the samples to a lab. DeSantis said that option could reduce the use of personal protective equipment.
Long-term care facilities have asked for liability coverage in certain COVID-19 related lawsuits. During Friday’s Reopening Task Force meeting, State Sen. Walt Simpson (R-Spring Hill), said he thinks they should make sure they are following all regulations.
“We’ve heard a lot about litigation concerns to these groups cause their treating our most vulnerable patients I would suspect that the state would have no mercy on folks who are not doing what they are supposed to be doing or should be doing,” said Sen. Simpson. “If you are in one of these facilities of care you need to get your generators in place, hurricane season starts June 1.”
Long term care facilities are required to have permanent generators installed. The law was put into place after 14 residents of a South Florida nursing home died in sweltering heat after the nursing home lost power during Hurricane Irma.
