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Current as of Sept. 23, 2020, at 7:00 a.m. |
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COVID-19 Testing Sites in Florida
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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.
Graphs, Charts, and Real-time Tracking of COVID-19
Data Sources
Data Sources on Social Media
Other Resources
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Current Statistics
- Fatality rate in Florida - 2.0%
- Covid fatality rate in FL by age group:
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15-24 years old - .03%
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25-34 years old - .07%
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35-44 years old - .21%
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45-54 years old - .51%
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55-64 years old - 1.6%
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65-74 years old - 5.4%
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75 and up - 17.2%
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Seasonal influenza mortality rate in the US (2017 CDC) 18-49 yo - .02%
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Median age of new Covid cases - 40 years old
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Emergency department visits w/ COVID-like illness - 19% decrease
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ICU beds available in Florida - 24%
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Hospital beds available in Florida - 25%
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Vaccine Tracking
Last updated: September 21, 2020 10:06 AM PST
212
vaccines are in development.
33
are now in clinical testing.
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The Covid-19 vaccine trial designed by Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech SE may allow them to find whether their shot works before their fastest-moving rivals.
The companies plan a first look after a mere 32 coronavirus infections have accumulated in their massive 44,000-person trial. That case total could be reached as soon as Sept. 27, according to Airfinity Ltd., a London-based analytics firms tracking vaccine trials.
Pfizer has also given itself four chances to get a preliminary result, before reaching the final goal of 164. Some trial experts say the company appears to be looking for a leg up in a race against frontrunners such as Moderna Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc to be first with a vaccine.
“I’ve never seen a trial where there were four interim analyses; that may be the Olympic record,” said Eric Topol, editor-in-chief of Medscape, a website offering clinical information for health-care professionals, and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California. “It’s obvious why it is being done: so you can just keep looking at the data to try to win a race.”
A wide range of symptoms and severity makes the evaluation of Covid-19 vaccines tricky. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said that to be approved, vaccines should cut the number of symptomatic cases by half. Yet documents released by the drugmakers show each has its own approach to defining which symptoms count, and when to count them.
Big drug studies usually allow a panel of monitors to get an early peek at the data once or twice before the planned end. The panel can stop the trial early if a treatment is judged overwhelmingly effective -- or alternatively, a total dud. Four early looks may give Pfizer an “easy route” to making sure it has results soon, said Marie-Paule Kieny, a former World Health Organization official who’s now a research director at the French health-science institute Inserm.
“It seems that there are different levels of stringency,” she said in an interview. “I wouldn’t say that Pfizer-BioNTech comes out as a star of stringency.”
Moderna, working with the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, won’t dive in until 53 cases have occurred; its ultimate goal is to make a judgment at 151 diagnoses. Cancer powerhouse AstraZeneca, collaborating with the University of Oxford, will take its first look at 75 cases, and not again until the trial is complete with 150.
“All trials have set the bar quite low for what they test against,” said Rasmus Bech Hansen, Airfinity’s chief executive officer.
Pfizer’s trial was designed to evaluate its vaccine candidate “as fast as possible,” said Amy Rose, a spokeswoman, in an email. The company has worked with government scientists to develop best practices for testing and based its schedule for interim analyses on the vaccine’s “strong profile” in early human trials and animal tests, she said.
Moderna’s plan was agreed upon with U.S. regulators, and the company has been open about the numbers since before the trial began in late July, spokesman Ray Jordan said in an email. Case totals for interim analysis were based on probabilities of success and “were not selected based on timeframes,” he said.
AstraZeneca said its trials are conducted under regulatory oversight and its plans have evolved over time to make sure they produce robust information in a timely way. All the companies said their trials will continue beyond points such as a preliminary readout or potential authorization.
Pfizer says its study will likely yield conclusive results in October. None of the drugmakers will likely know whether their vaccines lower hospitalizations until February, according to Airfinity. But it’s the earlier assessments that have observers most concerned.
Treatments such as Gilead Sciences Inc.’s antiviral remdesivir and convalescent plasma -- a soup of immune factors taken from the blood of recovered Covid-19 patients -- have already been authorized on the basis of somewhat limited data.
But those are mainly given to extremely sick patients whose lives are in danger. Authorizing a vaccine, on the other hand, might lead to use in hundreds of millions of uninfected people. If that happens, the data ought to be pretty convincing.
“A small number of additional events occurring or not occurring can tip the balance of a trial as to whether the findings are valid or not,” said Jonathan Kimmelman, director of the Biomedical Ethics Unit at McGill University in Montreal. “If you want robust findings that are going to be generalizable, you’re going to want to accumulate a reasonable number of events.”
Some vaccines are approved after just a few cases appear in trials. Merck & Co.’s Ebola vaccine was approved last year based on a 3,500-patient study that identified 10 cases, according to its label. But that shot had perfect effectiveness and was designed to prevent a disease with a sky-high death rate.
Billions of healthy people around the world at low risk of life-threatening disease could get a coronavirus shot, raising the bar for safety. An authorization that’s based on early results could mean that doctors know very little about a vaccine, other than the bare-bones results. The issue is gaining attention as questions persist about the halt of AstraZeneca’s human tests in the U.S. following the appearance of side effects that Oxford said were unlikely to be linked to the vaccine.
If Pfizer’s vaccine were to receive emergency authorization based on results from October, for example, most patients would have had less than two months of follow-up. At that point, there will be little known about its duration of protection, and its impact on severe disease may not be clear.
Along with a positive test for the coronavirus, Moderna requires most patients to have two or more symptoms to count as a case for judging vaccine efficacy, unless they have a telltale marker like shortness of breath.
But Pfizer’s trial reaches deeper into patients with mildly symptomatic cases. It officially counts even a coronavirus-positive patient with fever alone, one of the disease’s most common manifestations, as a symptomatic case.
This may allow Pfizer to tally cases faster, but also could mean an early result based mostly on mild cases, according Airfinity’s Hansen.
“We should really have hospitalizations or deaths as endpoints because ultimately we want to prevent people from getting seriously ill,” he said.
The rush for results may make it harder to get clear answers about how well the vaccines work, said Topol, the Scripps scientist.
“We want to know this vaccine has strong efficacy,” he said. “And that means two things: that it works in the majority of people and that it works to prevent serious infections, not sore throats or muscle aches.”
There's no doubt that the hyperpoliticization of the coronavirus is due mostly to liberals who decided the best course of action amid a pandemic was to turn themselves into insufferable moral police and shame anyone who set foot outside or forgot to wear a mask while taking a shower.
A healthy portion of people — I'm sure you know a few — saw that behavior and said something like, "Chill out. I'm a healthy, low-risk person who would like to resume my life with the proper precautions."
Even then, the shaming continues.
TV doctor Sanjay Gupta, to his credit, has not been as hysterical as his colleagues at CNN, but he lapsed on Tuesday during a conversation with the government's infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
"I always tell people, young or old, you don’t want this disease," said Gupta. "Because sometimes there is this perception, 'I’ll just get it, I’ll get through it, and I’ll be good to go. Especially if I’m a young person.' You don’t want this disease. You know, you heard even the president saying it’s just elderly people with heart diseases that get this. By the way, my father, who’s probably watching right now, is in his late 70s and has heart disease. And it always hurts me when people say, well, just the elderly with heart disease get this. I find it disrespectful, frankly."
It would certainly be disrespectful to suggest that any human life, no matter how older or sick, is expendable. But I'm confident that anyone stating the truth that the elderly with underlying health issues are at unique risk of succumbing to the virus aren't making that point.
What they're saying is what we all should have reconciled with long ago — that the vast majority of us can assess our individual risk, weighed against our health and age, and resume more normal activity. Those who the data say are at greater risk of serious complications from the virus, however, will have to make a different calculation, and we can collectively do our best to keep them safe.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it outright. "As you get older, your risk for severe illness from COVID-19 increases," according to the CDC's website. "For example, people in their 50s are at higher risk for severe illness than people in their 40s. Similarly, people in their 60s or 70s are, in general, at higher risk for severe illness than people in their 50s. The greatest risk for severe illness from COVID-19 is among those aged 85 or older."
It further states that "by understanding the factors that put you at an increased risk, you can make decisions about what kind of precautions to take in your daily life."
Whether Gupta's dad is 55 years old and has a heart of steel or is in his late 70s with half of it missing, it's not disrespectful to acknowledge facts that should be moving us more and more people toward normal life. And, yes, normal life remains an option, no matter how many times Democrats or anyone in the national media denies it.
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Household net worth increased by $7.6 trillion in the second quarter, surpassing the pre-pandemic high as rebounding stocks bolstered Americans’ wealth, a Federal Reserve report revealed on Monday.
Household net worth increased 6.8 percent to $119 trillion, the largest gain in quarterly records dating back to 1952. Federal government borrowing spiked as lawmakers passed fiscal relief measures, according to the report.
Household net worth saw a record decline in the first quarter as the coronavirus pandemic and shutdowns pushed the economy into a recession. Increasing household net worth is one sign of the nation’s uneven recovery.
While the labor market has continued to struggle, the value of equities increased by $5.7 trillion over the first quarter and real estate grew by $458 billion. The S&P 500 matched pre-pandemic levels in mid-August and has since set new highs.
For the first time in at least four years, consumer credit not including mortgage debt fell in the second quarter. Credit decreased $69 billion as consumers did less credit-card borrowing in light of the pandemic.
In the highest ratio since 1989, businesses owed $1.09 for every $1 in debt owed by households, according to Bloomberg.
As unemployment claims remain high, not all Americans are experiencing relief from the rebound in stocks and housing: Forty-five percent of Americans don’t own equities, while one-third of households don’t own a home, according to a June Gallup poll.
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The following is an open letter to the American people from 68 leaders participating in the Health Policy Consensus Group. The full list of signatories follows the letter.
The nation faces a clear choice between two paths for America’s health care future:
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One path is largely controlled by the government, where you get few choices and no options to escape.
- The other is controlled by you and doctors, leading to more choices, lower costs, and improved quality and access.
The first path builds on failure. Approaches like a public option—”Medicare for All” on the installment plan—double down on Obamacare’s failures, especially its soaring costs and tightening restrictions on access to the doctors and hospitals you want and need.
Make no mistake: No matter how their ideas are packaged, the left’s ultimate goal is Medicare for All—legislation sponsored by a majority of House Democrats that is full of empty promises and that would outlaw your existing coverage and put you on a government-run plan.
Americans know we need real change. You want to be in charge of your health care without asking Washington politicians or health insurance bureaucrats for permission.
Here’s how the Health Care Choices 2020 proposal makes you better off in at least 10 ways. The proposal:
1. Empowers you to keep your health coverage and doctors when you change or lose your job. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the need for people to have secure, portable health coverage. Congress should codify and improve the administration’s Health Reimbursement Arrangement rule that allows employers to offer and employees to use tax-free dollars to buy insurance they can keep if they lose or change jobs. Our plan also would let low-income patients use the value of their existing government coverage to enroll in better, private health plans, including employer-sponsored coverage.
2. Saves you money on health care and drugs by making the prices of health care transparent. Medical care is one of the few services where you don’t know the price until weeks or months after you receive care. Congress should codify the administration’s transparency rules so you can compare prices and obtain the best value—and share in the savings.
3. Eliminates your risk of surprise medical bills through transparency and truth in advertising. Too many patients face high medical bills they did not expect and did not agree to pay. Transparent prices and truth in advertising are the first steps to resolving that problem.
4. Benefits you financially when you choose lower-cost, high-quality care. Prices for the same medical services can vary by thousands of dollars. You should be able to benefit if you choose a lower-cost alternative that better suits your needs. Congress should permanently eliminate regulatory barriers that keep you from being able to shop for value, and it should allow you to put any savings you receive into a health savings account.
5. Gives you better options, lower premiums, and better access to doctors if you get sick, have a preexisting condition, and need financial help. Today, Congress sends money to insurance companies and imposes burdensome mandates that drive up the cost of coverage for everyone. Instead, Congress should give regulatory relief to states so they can reform their insurance markets. And it should convert the subsidies that currently go to Medicaid expansion and health insurance tax credits into formula grants to the states to support coverage for lower-income and vulnerable patients. The grants would be distributed through the Children’s Health Insurance Program, with built-in life protections so taxpayer money can’t be used to fund abortions.
6. Gives you access to specialized plans and care if you have a chronic illness. Health insurance plans can perform better when they don’t try to be all things to all people. Instead, we should encourage plans that include centers of excellence that cater to patients with specific medical problems, such as heart disease or diabetes. Congress should clear away barriers that block this option.
7. Gives you more options to get insurance and care tailored to your needs and those of your family. Government rules that dictate every detail of insurance policies keep consumers from selecting plans that make the most sense. Congress should codify the administration’s rules on Association Health Plans and short-term policies, expanding the range of options for consumers to get coverage that meets their needs, including the ability to choose a direct primary care doctor or join a health care sharing ministry.
8. Makes it easier for you to manage your own health care dollars. Millions of Americans with high health costs are not eligible to contribute to health savings accounts, including seniors on Medicare. Congress should create broad, flexible access to these accounts so anyone can use them in conjunction with more versatile plans, including those that provide high-quality care for chronic illness.
9. Makes telehealth permanent so you can talk “virtually” with medical care providers. Telehealth allows patients to have access to their doctors without long waits, trips to emergency rooms, and risking exposure to other sick patients in a doctor’s office. Regulators cleared away barriers to telehealth during the pandemic, and the number of virtual doctors’ visits has soared in just a few months. Congress and the states should make this temporary relief permanent and relax other barriers to unleash the full potential of new care delivery options.
10. Offers more choices, lower prices, and better quality by removing barriers to innovation and competition. Policymakers at the federal and state levels have imposed burdensome mandates and regulations that discourage competition, interfere with patients’ access to the care of their choosing, and reward big businesses and special interests at the expense of patients. Examples include laws such as certificate-of-need regulations that create barriers to entry and rules that prevent providers from practicing at the top of their licenses.
Congress and the states should lift those barriers to foster innovation and provide more and better options for consumers to get lower prices and better quality through competition.
The debate today is between those who want to exert even more government control over the health care sector and those, like us, who favor giving patients more choice and control, and who support allowing the creativity we have seen in the COVID-19 crisis to flourish.
We want a system that encourages innovation and competition to provide consumers the best care at the lowest cost. We welcome the opportunity to work with policymakers to shape the better, brighter health care future we believe can be ahead.
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He also has urged Republicans to confirm a new justice without delay, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) has said he would seek to confirm any nominee that Mr. Trump puts forward. Democrats, meanwhile, are pushing for the vacancy to be filled by the next president.
Here is a look at the five women who are under consideration by Mr. Trump, based on Wall Street Journal reporting:
Judge Amy Coney Barrett
Judge Amy Coney Barrett, 48 years old, was nominated by Mr. Trump to the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2017 and confirmed by the Senate that October in a 55-43 vote. A graduate of Notre Dame Law School, Judge Barrett clerked from 1998 to 1999 for Justice Antonin Scalia, then practiced law at a Washington, D.C., law firm before returning in 2002 to Notre Dame as a professor of constitutional law and federal courts.
Judge Barrett’s Roman Catholic faith was a flashpoint in her appellate court confirmation proceedings, as Democratic senators questioned whether her beliefs would improperly influence her. “The dogma lives loudly within you,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) told Judge Barrett, in an exchange that prompted outrage from religious conservatives.
The senators asked Judge Barrett about a law review article she co-wrote in 1998 that argued that Catholic judges are “morally precluded” from enforcing the death penalty. At the hearing, Judge Barrett said she believed judges shouldn’t put their personal views above the law.
Since taking the bench as an appeals-court judge, Judge Barrett has written opinions on issues including sentencing for drug-overdose death convictions, the right to criminal counsel and federal jurisdiction over arbitration proceedings.
Judge Barbara Lagoa
A Trump appointee, Judge Barbara Lagoa, 52 years old, has served on the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since December, after being confirmed by the Senate in a mostly bipartisan 80-15 vote.
A Cuban-American and Miami native, Judge Lagoa served briefly on the Florida Supreme Court as the first Hispanic woman on the state’s high court. She also spent more than a dozen years as an intermediate appellate judge in Florida before being elevated by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. From 2003 to 2006, she worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami.
Judge Lagoa earned her bachelor’s degree from Florida International University and her law degree from Columbia University.
Judge Joan Larsen
Joan Larsen, 51 years old, was nominated by President Trump to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in late 2017; she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate 60-38. In 2018, she was in the running for the Supreme Court seat vacated by retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy but wasn’t considered a finalist, The Journal reported at the time.
She previously served on the Michigan State Supreme Court from 2015 until 2017. Judge Larsen graduated first in her class at Northwestern University School of Law in 1993—she earned her undergraduate degree in her native Iowa at the University of Northern Iowa—and clerked for two federal judges, including the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The bulk of her earlier career was spent at the University of Michigan, where she was a law professor. She took a hiatus from the faculty in 2002 to become deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush. Her career also included a stint in private practice at the law firm Sidley Austin LLP.
Judge Allison Rushing
Judge Allison Rushing, 38 years old, sits on the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Trump nominated her to the court in August 2018, and she was confirmed by the Senate the following March. Born in 1982, the North Carolina native was the youngest federal judge in the nation at the time of her confirmation. She holds a B.A. degree from Wake Forest University and a law degree from Duke University School of Law.
At the time of her nomination, a coalition of civil-rights organizations criticized her as a “young, ideological extremist.” In a 2018 letter, they noted that she clerked for three conservative judges—Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Gorsuch and U.S. Circuit Judge David Sentelle—and had interned at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian nonprofit. The White House called Judge Rushing “one of the best young appellate lawyers in the country.”
Kate Comerford Todd
As deputy counsel to the president, Kate Comerford Todd, 45 years old, is one of the most senior lawyers at the White House. She previously served as the chief counsel of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s litigation arm. She was also an associate counsel at the White House during the George W. Bush administration.
She clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and graduated from Harvard Law School, where she was the executive editor of the Harvard Law Review.
The House easily passed a temporary government-wide funding bill Tuesday evening in a bipartisan effort to keep the government running through the beginning of December.
The House voted 359-57 to approve the stop gap measure that will keep the government open through December 11. 56 Republicans and Rep. Justin Amash, I-Mich. voted against the measure, while Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., voted present.
Agreement on the bill came after considerable behind-the-scenes battling over proposed add-ons. The final agreement gives the administration continued immediate authority to dole out Agriculture Department subsidies in the run-up to Election Day. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., retreated from an initial draft that sparked a furor with Republicans and farm-state Democrats.
Instead, in talks Tuesday, Pelosi restored a farm aid funding patch sought by the administration, which has sparked the ire of Democrats who said it plays political favorites as it gives out bailout money to farmers and ranchers.
In return, Pelosi won COVID-related food aid for the poor, including a higher food benefit for families whose children are unable to receive free or reduced lunches because schools are closed over the coronavirus. Another add-on would permit states to remove hurdles to food stamps and nutrition aid to low-income mothers that are more difficult to clear during the pandemic.
The deal permitted the measure to speed through the House after a swift debate that should ensure smooth sailing in the GOP-held Senate before next Wednesday's deadline. There's no appetite on either side for a government shutdown.
The measure is the bare minimum accomplishment for Capitol Hill's powerful Appropriations committees, who pride themselves on their deal-making abilities despite gridlock in other corners of Congress. It came after bipartisan negotiations on a huge COVID-19 relief package imploded and appear unlikely to be rekindled — especially since the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has upended U.S. politics...
The legislation — called a continuing resolution, or CR, in Washington-speak — would keep every federal agency running at current funding levels through Dec. 11, which will keep the government afloat past an election that could reshuffle Washington’s balance of power.
The measure also extends many programs whose funding or authorizations lapse on Sept. 30, including the federal flood insurance program, highway and transit programs, and a long set of extensions of various health programs, such as a provision to prevent Medicaid cuts to hospitals that serve many poor people.
It also finances the possible transition to a new administration if Joe Biden wins the White House and would stave off an unwelcome COVID-caused increase in Medicare Part B premiums for outpatient doctor visits.
The underlying stopgap measure deals with the 30% of the federal government's day-to-day budget that goes to Cabinet agency operations funded by Congress each year. The annual appropriations process broke down in the Senate this year and it's unclear but probably unlikely that the $1.3 trillion in agency spending bills will be enacted this year, even in a post-election lame duck session, especially if Biden is elected to replace Trump.
In the past, both Democrats and Republicans have sought to use government funding deadlines and must-past temporary funding bills as leverage to try to win concessions elsewhere on Washington's agenda. Such efforts invariably fail.
Republicans in 2013 used it in a failed attempt to prevent implementation of the so-called Obamacare health law, and Senate Democrats returned the favor in 2018 in a futile effort to force debate on permitting immigrants brought into the country illegally as children to remain in the U.S.
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