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Current as of July 1, 2020 at 8:00 a.m.

COVID-19 Testing Sites - Florida

  • Drive-Thru Testing sites available are listed by county. Each walk up site can test up to 200 individuals per day. Access the list here

Safe. Smart. Step-by-Step


The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity is now giving daily updates on Florida’s Reemployment Assistance program


Access the Florida Department of Health COVID Dashboard


Graphs, Charts, and Real Time Tracking of COVID-19


Data Sources


Data Sources on Social Media


Other Resources


To date, more than 28 million COVID19 tests have been performed nationwide. Dr. Dean Watson, VP and Chief Integration Officer at TMH, is sharing more on the increase in testing, the importance of understanding hospitalization & mortality rates and why it's crucial to continue wearing masks.


Relying too much on a single datapoint is a mistake. But the NC testing is incredible. It doesn’t say 17% of people are infected. It says they were - AND RECOVERED. MOSTLY IN THE LAST MONTH. Which strongly suggests the Italian doctors who say the virus has weakened are right...

And puts in context everything that is happening in the rest of the Sunbelt, the massive spikes in positive tests that have occurred without hospital overrun, the fact Houston hospitals have 3x the number of Covid patients in two weeks but ~ no more patients overall...


It was some time in an entirely different age, more than a full season removed from today, that we were told we had to shut down most of America to flatten the curve of coronavirus infections. Now it seems that is no longer good enough. So the suffering will continue, but not the sort that government officials are warning us about.

“If you look at the curves of outbreaks, they go big peaks, and then come down. What we need to do is flatten that down,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in early March, just before the lockdown cascade began.

Within days, Kaiser Health News reported that “such steps will help mitigate a surge in cases that could overwhelm the hospital system.” At roughly the same time, Drew Harris, a Thomas Jefferson University population health researcher, told National Public Radio that delaying the spread of new cases of coronavirus over the course of weeks or months was needed so the health care system could “adjust and accommodate all the people who are possibly going to get sick and possibly need hospital care.”

Eventually, after a grueling three months in which the economy was pitched over the side as if it were useless cargo to get rid of in a raging storm, our elected officials began lifting restrictions. But now we’re being threatened again with closures.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has already re-closed bars and nightclubs in seven counties, is threatening to use a “dimmer switch” on the flickering economy, and says “I am committed to intervening,” which means “augmenting the orders and advancing even more restrictive ones.”

Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who was an early “reopener,” has ordered bars closed across the state. Florida, also among the first states to lift restrictions, has “rolled back” its reopening.

Other states are also slow-walking their returns to normalcy.

The media as one would expect are cheerleading a reclosure campaign with daily headlines screaming about spiking, soaring, and surging cases across the country. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, favors a federal mask mandate, and Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, says he will require all Americans to wear masks if he’s elected. They say their position is based on “science,” but the objective is to create a climate of fear.

It’s true that coronavirus infections continue to increase in the U.S. But while they’ve been growing, daily deaths have been falling.

Yes, deaths are a lagging indicator. Maybe the death spike is coming. Driven-mad-by-spite Paul Krugman seems to looking forward to one. But there’s no way to know this. It’s been made clear the experts can’t accurately predict the future


hile much about the COVID-19 pandemic remains uncertain, we know how it will likely end: when the spread of the virus starts to slow (and eventually ceases altogether) because enough people have developed immunity to it. At that point, whether it’s brought on by a vaccine or by people catching the disease, the population has developed “herd immunity.”

“Once the level of immunity passes a certain threshold, then the epidemic will start to die out because there aren’t enough new people to infect,” said Natalie Dean of the University of Florida.

While determining that threshold for COVID-19 is critical, a lot of nuance is involved in calculating exactly how much of the population needs to be immune for herd immunity to take effect and protect the people who aren’t immune.

At first it seems simple enough. The only thing you need to know is how many people, on average, are infected by each infected person. This value is called R0 (pronounced “R naught”). Once you have that, you can plug it into a simple formula for calculating the herd immunity threshold: 1 − 1/R0.

Let’s say the R0 for COVID-19 is 2.5, meaning each infected person infects, on average, two and a half other people (a common estimate). In that case, the herd immunity threshold for COVID-19 is 0.6, or 60%. That means the virus will spread at an accelerating rate until, on average across different places, 60% of the population becomes immune.

Diagram showing how a person infected with a disease of R0 = 2 infects 2 people
Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Quanta Magazine

At that point, the virus will still spread, but at a decelerating rate until it stops completely. Just as a car doesn’t come to a stop the moment you take your foot off the gas, the virus won’t vanish the moment herd immunity is reached.

“You could imagine that once 60% of the population is infected, the number of infections starts to drop. But it might be another 20% that gets infected while the disease is starting to die out,” said Joel Miller of La Trobe University in Australia.

That 60% is also the threshold past which new introductions of the virus — say, an infected passenger disembarking from a cruise ship into a healthy port with herd immunity — will quickly burn out.

Diagram showing how it becomes harder for a disease to spread if more people are immune

“It doesn’t mean you won’t be able to start a fire at all, but that outbreak is going to die,” said Kate Langwig of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.


The pathogen that struck the world in late 2019 is called a "novel coronavirus." The modifier "novel" indicates that humans have not encountered it before. Hence, the immunities our bodies have built up to fight familiar viruses are useless against this new threat.

This novel virus has created a novel economic predicament. In a typical recession, households reduce spending involuntarily, since they have lost income. In this case, household members have deliberately chosen not to shop or travel or seek entertainment outside their homes, even if they can afford to do so. In a typical recession, the government would like households to resume spending as soon as possible. In this case, the government has been more concerned with slowing the spread of the virus, and policymakers actually prefer to see "inessential" consumption activities curtailed. In a typical recession, construction and durable-goods manufacturing experience the sharpest declines, while service industries stay relatively stable. In this case, in-person services have been among the hardest hit sectors of the economy. In a typical recession, nearly every industry can look past the immediate troubles and foresee something close to a return to normal. In this case, retail stores, restaurants, entertainment venues, institutions of higher education, hotels, and the like foresee drastic changes even if the economy were to revive rapidly. In a typical recession, international trade, tourism, and migration continue. In this recession, they have been disrupted entirely. In our most recent recession in 2008-2009, the most important institutions that lost viability were in the financial sector. In this recession, it is non-financial firms — particularly small businesses — that are threatened with insolvency.

But instead of crafting a new strategy to respond to these unprecedented circumstances, policymakers have dusted off the playbook they used during the 2008 financial crisis. They've passed massive fiscal "stimulus" measures and adopted a greatly expanded role for the Federal Reserve in propping up financial markets. It is far from clear that these were the right plays to call in 2008; it is even less clear they are the right plays to call now.

What is clear, however, is that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the deterioration of the concepts that underpin contemporary macroeconomic-policy thinking in America. That deterioration consists of a growing disconnect between the ideas that ground macroeconomic policy and the realities of the modern economy. The time has come to jettison both the Keynesian and monetarist paradigms that macroeconomic policymakers employ and to pursue an alternative paradigm more suitable to the conditions prevailing in today's economy. Such a paradigm might be best described in terms of patterns of sustainable specialization and trade, or PSST. This new model offers us a more accurate understanding of the forces at work in our economy — and a more constructive foundation for public policy — than either the Keynesian or the monetarist models do.

By considering both the older paradigms and this new one in relation to the Great Recession as well as the current Covid-19 crisis, we can begin to see a way forward for economists, for policymakers, and for a world confronting daunting economic prospects in the wake of the pandemic.


The nation's top CEOs are as dour about the economic outlook as they have been in 11 years, according to the Business Roundtable's quarterly Economic Outlook Survey, released Monday.

The Index, based on a survey that asks top executives about their plans for hiring and investing over the coming six months, dropped to 34.3 in the second quarter of 2020, its lowest level since the second quarter of 2009.

The decline showed a 38.4-point drop from last quarter alone as the coronavirus and policies to contain it threw sand in the gears of the economy.

But the Index was more optimistic than it was at the depth of the Great Recession in 2009, when it reached negative 5.

The executives by and large said their businesses would not recover until the end of next year, and more than a quarter said it would take longer.

Recent outbreaks in states such as Florida and Texas have added to the woes.


The economic shutdowns and confusing scramble for federal loans and other aid were hard enough for small business owners.

Can Corporate America really change?

But now they face even more hurdles in their bid to survive. The Paycheck Protection Program -- a major lifeline for many -- will stop issuing new loans after Tuesday. And the closure comes just as coronavirus cases are spiking in dozens of states, calling into question whether state and local authorities will hit the brakes on the economy again.

As it is, pulling in customers during multiple "phases" of reopening has been challenging. Businesses have had to constantly update their marketing for which services they're providing -- Delivery? Curbside pickup? In-person shopping? Outdoor dining only? -- and the new health rules that go along with those.

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"It's an extra PR nightmare," said Ann Leadbetter, who owns Meriwether Cider in Boise, Idaho, with her husband and two adult daughters. Her business includes a tap room and a cider house from which they sell their own hard ciders.

But small business owners say the biggest ongoing hurdle is the financial uncertainty that clouds everything.


The Supreme Court sided with a group of families in Montana that challenged a state law which banned scholarship money from being used toward faith-based schools in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. The grants were given via donations that were tax deductible. The court ruled that discrimination against non-secular schools is a violation of the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment, and that although states “need not subsidize private education,” non-secular institutions cannot be discriminated against in the distribution of such subsidies based on religious ties.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion and sided with the conservative wing of the court.

“The Montana Legislature established a program to provide tuition assistance to parents who send their children to private schools. The program grants a tax credit to anyone who donates to certain organizations that in turn award scholarships to selected students attending such schools. When petitioners sought to use the scholarships at a religious school, the Montana Supreme Court struck down the program. The Court relied on the “no-aid” provision of the State Constitution, which prohibits any aid to a school controlled by a ‘church, sect, or denomination,’ the Chief Justice wrote. “...The Free Exercise Clause, which applies to the States under the Fourteenth Amendment, ‘protects religious observers against unequal treatment’ and against ‘laws that impose special disabilities on the basis of religious status’...To be eligible for government aid under the Montana Constitution, a school must divorce itself from any religious control or affiliation. Placing such a condition on benefits or privileges ‘inevitably deters or discourages the exercise of First Amendment rights...’The Free Exercise Clause protects against even “indirect coercion,” and a State “punishe[s] the free exercise of religion” by disqualifying the religious from government aid as Montana did here.”


Over the past several years, a social justice philosophy has arisen that is less a political program than a religion in all but name. Where Christianity calls for people to display their moral worth through faith in Jesus, modern Third-Wave Antiracism (henceforth TWA) calls for people to display their moral worth through opposition to racism. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, this vision has increasingly been expressed through procedures, routines, and phraseology directly patterned on Abrahamic religion.

America certainly has work to do on race. For one, while racism does not explain why cops kill more black than white people—poverty makes all people more likely to be killed by the cops, hundreds of poor whites are killed annually, but more black people are poor—they harass and abuse black people more than white people, and the real-life impact of this is in its way just as pernicious as the disparity in killings would be. If the tension between black people and the cops were resolved, America's race problem would quickly begin dissolving faster than it ever has. But making this happen will require work, as will ending the war on drugs, improving educational opportunities for all disadvantaged black children, and other efforts such as steering more black teenagers to vocational programs training them for solid careers without four years of college. 

These are real things, upon which we must behold scenes like in Bethesda, where protesters kneeled on the pavement in droves, chanting allegiance with upraised hands to a series of anti-white privilege tenets incanted by what a naïve anthropologist would recognize as a flock's pastor. On a similar occasion, white protesters bowed down in front of black people standing in attendance. In Cary, North Carolina, whites washed black protesters' feet as a symbol of subservience and sympathy. Elsewhere, when a group of white activists painted whip scars upon themselves in sympathy with black America's past, many black protesters found it a bit much.


About a month after Bill de Blasio personally led a police raid on a Hasidic rabbi's funeral in Brooklyn, which he portrayed as an intolerable threat in the era of COVID-19, New York's mayor visited the same borough to address a tightly packed crowd of protesters who had gathered in response to George Floyd's death. Far from ordering them to disperse in the name of public health, the unmasked mayor enthusiastically expressed solidarity with the demonstrators.

The contrast between de Blasio's anger at Jewish mourners and his solicitude toward political protesters figures prominently in last Friday's decision by a federal judge who deemed New York's pandemic-inspired restrictions on religious gatherings unconstitutional. The ruling, which said COVID-19 control measures violate the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom when they draw arbitrary distinctions between religious and secular conduct, is a warning to politicians across the country as they loosen the sweeping restrictions they imposed in the name of flattening the curve.

"Something absolutely unacceptable happened in Williamsburg tonite," de Blasio tweeted the day of the funeral raid. "When I heard, I went there myself to ensure the crowd was dispersed. And what I saw WILL NOT be tolerated so long as we are fighting the Coronavirus."

De Blasio added: "My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period."

But that period turned out to be a comma, followed by an exception for large outdoor gatherings promoting a cause that appealed to the mayor's progressive instincts. As U.S. District Judge Gary Sharpe noted when he issued an injunction against New York's limits on religious services, both de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo actively encouraged the recent protests against police brutality.

Sharpe agreed with the plaintiffs—two Roman Catholic priests from upstate New York and three Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn—that de Blasio and Cuomo had created a de facto distinction between religious and political gatherings. He also noted explicit restrictions on religious activities that did not apply to secular activities posing similar risks of virus transmission.

The rules limited attendance at indoor church and synagogue services to 25 percent of capacity while allowing various businesses, including stores, offices, salons, and restaurants, to operate at 50 percent of capacity and imposing no limit on special educational services. The state "specifically authorized outdoor, in-person graduation ceremonies of no more than 150 people" while imposing a 25-person limit on outdoor religious gatherings, including masses, funerals, and weddings.

The Supreme Court has said neutral, generally applicable laws that happen to restrict religious activities are consistent with the First Amendment. But it also has said laws that impose special burdens on religious activities are subject to strict scrutiny, meaning they are unconstitutional unless they are narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest.


A Brief History
On July 1, 1863, the battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania began, perhaps the most important battle of the US Civil War. Many historians have considered it the battle that the war hinged on, especially as it was the “high water mark” of the Confederate invasion of the North. We list here some of the most important, most critical battles in our nation’s history, battles that the very existence of the country depended on. Since the only wars that our existence hinged on were the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II, by our definition only those wars can be considered. (Note: Although the Battle of Midway was certainly the turning point in the Pacific in 1942, we do not see the Japanese as an actual threat to America’s existence or sovereignty in World War II.)

Digging Deeper
5. Normandy, 1944. 

If the D-Day invasion had failed, especially if it failed decisively, the Germans may have been able to redeploy forces to the East and potentially defeat the Soviets, creating an entirely different scenario for the resolution of World War II. After the Battle of the Atlantic, Normandy is certainly the most critical battle of World War II for the US.

4. Antietam, 1862.

Only barely a victory for the Union Army, the battle was the bloodiest single day in US military history with 22,000 combined casualties and almost 4000 combined deaths. Although an enormous blunder by the Union Army to fail to run down and keep attacking a numerically smaller Confederate Army, the fact that the Confederates retreated gave the appearance and technical definition of a defeat for the Rebels. This battle was critical to the Civil War in that it encouraged President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which combined with an apparent Union victory kept France and Britain from recognizing the Confederacy and perhaps even entering the war on the side of the South.


Jefferson and America’s other founders understood that individuals who are free to conduct their own affairs as they see fit are far more likely to be productive and to form mutually advantageous social and economic arrangements than if they must run a gamut of government-imposed prohibitions and requirements.

Adam Smith was of the same mind when he celebrated, with an eloquence equal to that of Jefferson, “the obvious and simple system of natural liberty” in which all special privileges and restraints on consensual economic activity are “completely taken away.”

With this liberty, wrote Smith, “Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society.”


The Battle of the Somme was one of the bloodiest of World War One, with more than one million people killed or wounded. It lasted five months as the British and French Armies fought the Germans on a 15-mile front.


Over the last week, many governors have reinstituted coronavirus policy implementations which had been in various phases of cessation. Why? This is because of an alleged “spike” in new COVID-19 infections. Other states have abbreviated their phased lifting of lockdowns. This is despite the fact that current US deaths from COVID-19 are now 90% off their peak. 

Washington State is considering criminalizing the refusal to wear a mask. New York State governor Andrew Cuomo has imposed new out-of-state visitor bans (with the comment that “in addition to law enforcement, [he] … expect[s] individuals such as hotel clerks … to question travelers from select states”). Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s comments that if he were to win the presidency, a federal mask mandate may follow. The Speaker of the House quickly voiced her support for that measure.

These and other developments suggest that rather than approaching the end of the government-created crisis, we may be at the threshold of a new beginning. That the recent rise in infections is mostly an artifact of massively expanded testing capabilities seems to occur to no one in the government or media. Equally unnoticed is that the apparently much wider spread of COVID-19 infections, many of which show middling symptoms or are treated as annoyances, should result in a decrease of concern: it appears that many times the number of people estimated early on have been infected by the novel coronavirus to little or no consequence. 

And further still, that some of the spike is accountable to the civil unrest in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. The prevalence of new COVID-19 infections among mostly Gen-Zs and Millennials (beside their prevalence in jobs that require COVID testing, such as in the fast food and service industries) undoubtedly had much to do with the disingenuity of political officials who ordered them to stay home, out of work and away from social occasions, yet responded with deafening silence as protests, demonstrations, and rioting broke out. 

Note the recent data trend in California:


Over the preceding decades, hundreds of potential treatments for Alzheimer's Disease have failed to show clinical benefits in human trials, crashing and burning with a consistency that Stat News' Damian Garde called "metronomic." That's terrible news for the more than five million Americans who currently have Alzheimer's and the more than fourteen million who will be living with it by 2060.

It seems that the primary hypothesis for the cause of Alzheimer's – that a buildup in the brain of a protein called beta-amyloid is responsible for cognitive decline – is wrong. Drugs that reduce beta-amyloid don't resolve Alzheimer's patients' crippling dementia.

But despite a landscape of pharmaceutical solutions that's largely devoid of hope, there does exist a widely available therapeutic that has proven highly effective at preventing Alzheimer's: exercise.

According to the Alzheimer's Society, "Several prospective studies have looked at middle-aged people and the effects of physical exercise on their thinking and memory in later life. Combining the results of 11 studies shows that regular exercise can significantly reduce the risk of developing dementia by about 30 percent. For Alzheimer's disease specifically, the risk was reduced by 45 percent."

Those numbers are truly remarkable, but there are a few nuances. First off, physical activities like simple household chores, work-related movement, and walking do not seem to cut into Alzheimer's risk. It takes a little more effort. 


Scrambling to revive the Russian collusion narrative before the 2020 election, the New York Times may have imperiled our troops’ lives and compromised American national security by reporting on unconfirmed intel.

This story is a big deal to me — it’s personal. I am angry that friends I served with in Afghanistan could’ve had a target on their backs. I did more than 50 vehicle convoy missions outside the wire when I served in 2014-15: There may have been a bounty on my head.

So, how do we know Russians were paying Taliban fighters bounties for killing American troops? We don’t.

The Taliban said they weren’t getting paid by Russians. The Russian government says they weren’t doling out bounties. It may not have even been the Russians — Iran has often targeted our troops in that region.

I serve on the House Armed Services Committee, so I track the Russian threat very closely. We also follow the China threat and the Iran threat closely, as well as a dozen other areas of interest to American national security. I desperately want to know about our adversary’s malign activity in Afghanistan and every inch of the globe. If our troops are in harm’s way, members of the House Armed Services Committee need to know that.

We rely on the intelligence community to do their jobs and vet intelligence for us. There are a lot of rumors floating around globally. If we acted on all of them, it’d be unwise. That’s why we are patient and require hard, confirmed intelligence vetted by the intelligence community before we act.

As an American and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, I’m disgusted that Trump’s detractors would put American lives in harm’s way just to try and score political points ahead of the 2020 election.

Now the intelligence community’s hands are tied. They can’t follow up on this intelligence and learn more about the Russian operation in Afghanistan, which leaves our troops stationed there in danger. Worse, everyone from National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien to Central Intelligence Agency Gina Haspel is now having to turn their entire attention into explaining the nuances of our national security processes to the media.

And for what? The real irony — no one believes in this hoax anymore. The Russian-collusion narrative has been dispelled time and again. The House and Senate Intelligence committees said there was no evidence of collusion. The intelligence community said there was no collusion. Bob Mueller said there was no collusion.

Politically speaking, I’m glad the Democrats have chosen to reinvent the Russian collusion conspiracy theory. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., look silly trying to spin up outrage at this story.

No one is buying that President Trump, who’s spent his first four years rebuilding a military Barack Obama laid to waste, giving our veterans the care they deserve and championing an “America First” foreign policy, would sacrifice our troops to get cozier with Vladimir Putin. In fact, no one’s been tougher on the Russians than Trump! If we had verified this intelligence, we can count on the president to hold Russia accountable just as he’s done since his presidency began.

But as an American and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, I’m disgusted that Trump’s detractors would put American lives in harm’s way just to try and score political points ahead of the 2020 election.


In partnership with Young America’s Foundation (YAF) and Echelon Insights, Townhall has obtained exclusive polling results on patriotism and the favorability of the United States among America’s youth. 

Of those surveyed, 82 percent had a “very” or “somewhat” favorable opinion of the American flag, divided among 91 percent of high school-aged students and 73 percent of high school graduates. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they believe America is “exceptional and unique” and is a country that “values liberty.” The poll found 54 percent of those who participated enthusiastically feel America offers “opportunity for all who work for it,” and 46 percent said America is both a “good example for other countries” and a nation that “values justice;” 43 percent enthusiastically said America “values equality.” 

While standing for the national anthem draws country-wide controversy, 63 percent of respondents feel “extremely” or “very” comfortable standing for the national anthem and 58 percent held the same view of saying the Pledge of Allegiance at a meeting or event.

Respondents logged an 80 percent “very” or “somewhat” favorable opinion of war veterans, 75 percent of the military, 72 percent of the Constitution, 65 percent of the Founding Fathers and 57 percent of American history as a whole. With these encouraging numbers, 34 percent of respondents would be “extremely” or “very” willing to serve in the military if America were to be attacked, while 31 percent said they would serve if we went to war and 30 percent during “peacetime.”

Some 8,000 years ago, the skull of a Scandinavian man in his 50s was impaled on a wooden stake in Sweden. Now, a new facial reconstruction by Swedish forensic artist Oscar Nilsson allows modern viewers to envision this mysterious individual’s prominent cheekbones, blue eyes and brown hair, reports Kristin Romey for National Geographic.

Archaeologists found the man’s cranium—as well as the skulls of eight other adults and one infant—in the boggy sediment of the Kanaljorden excavation site in Motala, Sweden, in 2012. The discovery marked the first archaeological evidence of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers mounting human skulls on stakes.