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Current as of August 3, 2020, at 8:06 a.m.
COVID-19 Testing Sites in 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 giving daily updates on Florida’s Reemployment Assistance program: View DEO Dashboard Here .

Florida Department of Health COVID Dashboard: Access dashboard here .

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

Data Sources

Data Sources on Social Media

Other Resources


Current Statistics

  • Fatality rate in Florida - 1.5%
  • Covid fatality rate in FL by age group:
  • 15-24 years old - .02%
  • 25-34 years old - .06%
  • 35-44 years old - .19%
  • 45-54 years old - .40%
  • 55-64 years old - 1.2%
  • 65-74 years old - 4.0%
  • 75 and up - 13.6%
  • Seasonal influenza mortality rate in the US (2017 CDC) 18-49 yo - .02%

  • Median age of new Covid cases - 40 years old
  • Emergency department visits w/ COVID-like illness - 37% decrease
  • ICU beds available in Florida - 20%
  • Hospital beds available in Florida - 26%

Vaccine Tracking

Last updated: July 31, 2020 12:09 PM PST

199
vaccines are in development.

20
are now in clinical testing.


Florida finally got good news in its fight against the  coronavirus  Sunday when the number of new cases dipped to a one-month low, the rapid rise in deaths eased and the percent of tests coming back positive fell below 10 percent for the first time in 40 days.

Those trends were reflected in Palm Beach County as well, with no deaths reported Sunday, new cases dipping to a level not seen since July 1 and the percent of positive test results remaining below 10 percent for the fifth day in a row.

And all on a day when residents awoke to news that a menacing hurricane would remain at sea as it slipped by in the less-fearsome form of a tropical storm.

New cases in Florida totaled 7,104, the lowest number since July 6, when 6,336 cases were recorded in the state. The number of people in Florida who have tested positive since March now totals 487,132.

And the number of deaths reported by the Florida Department of Health, 62, reached a low not seen since July 13 after five days with at least 178 new deaths reported. In total, Florida has recorded 7,206 deaths, including 122 non-Florida residents who died in the state.

Statewide, the rate for those testing positive the first time dipped to 9.3 percent of 77,000 tests reported. The state's overall positivity rate remains at 13 percent for all tests conducted.

Gov. Ron DeSantis established 10 percent as the cutoff for allowing counties to reopen back in May, although health officials say a clearer indication of the virus' weakening spread is when the positivity rate remains under 5 percent.

The number of tests received by testing labs is unlikely to yet have been influenced by the shutdown of state testing sites on Friday because of the advancing storm as many tests take a week or more to process.

In Palm Beach County, the 372 new cases, bringing the county's total to 34,226, is the lowest one-day number since July 1.

While the number of deaths has fluctuated from none to 21 since July 1 and reached 18 Saturday, Sunday's report of no deaths comes as the county has been averaging 10 deaths a day since July 1. In total, the county death toll is 848.

And the rate of infection maintained its downward trajectory in Palm Beach County, reaching 8.2 percent, the fifth day in a row that it fell below 10 percent.


When Karen Tibbals of Washington, N.J. heard that more than 100,000 volunteers would be needed for late-stage clinical trials of four COVID-19 vaccines, she wanted to roll up her sleeves and get one of the experimental shots.

Tibbals is 65 and has the autoimmune disease rheumatoid arthritis, raising her risk of suffering severe complications of  COVID-19 . But she also brings a unique perspective to the race to develop a vaccine: Tibbals is a retired pharmaceutical marketing executive who saw the clinical trial process up close during stints at Novartis  NVS, -2.48%  and Merck.  MRK, +1.58%

Some of the  coronavirus vaccines  entail delivering bits of genetic material from the virus to prompt the body to launch an immune response — emerging technology that hasn’t been widely deployed before. But that doesn’t scare Tibbals.

‘I have a chance of helping other people’

“This is really cool new technology; I trust it. I have a chance of helping other people,” Tibbals said, adding that she’s confident the companies will follow procedures for safe clinical trials. She has volunteered for the trials on the site for the  COVID-19 Prevention Network  (COVPN), an initiative of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

COVPN is managing the recruitment of volunteers for clinical trials of vaccines being developed by  AstraZeneca   AZN, -3.64%  , Novavax  NVAX, -2.40%  , Moderna  MRNA, -4.54%  and the Johnson & Johnson  JNJ, -0.73%  unit Janssen. The Moderna trial began in July, with the other three trials starting between August and December.

Maybe you’re interested in participating in a COVID-19 clinical trial, too. Here’s what you need to know:
Each company will need about 30,000 volunteers for its trials, and more COVID-19 vaccine developers could be added if their products advance to late-stage clinical trials, said Michele Andrasik, a scientist in the vaccine and infectious disease unit at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and one of the managers of community outreach for COVPN.

Who the vaccine developers want

COVID vaccine developers are particularly interested in recruiting clinical trial participants who are considered to be most vulnerable to COVID-19, Andrasik said.

“People with pre-existing conditions are a priority population, as are adults over age 65,” she noted. African-Americans, Native Americans and Latinos also have a high chance of being admitted to a vaccine trial. So do people who are most likely to contract the disease because they work at health care facilities or in open workspaces, such as meatpacking plants.

Some people, however, might not qualify for the vaccine trials because of medications they’re taking to treat chronic diseases or other factors.

But because of the sheer number of participants who’ll be needed, Andrasik said, anyone who’s interested should volunteer. “Even if someone is not eligible, for example, for the Moderna trial, they may be eligible for a future trial,” she said.

Before signing up, though, you’ll want to understand what being in a COVID-19 vaccine trial will entail.

The chance of getting a placebo

First and foremost, don’t assume you’ll be able to throw away your mask and stop social distancing after you get the shot. These trials will be placebo-controlled. That means every participant will have a 50-50 chance of getting a sham shot rather than an actual vaccine.

In fact, the vaccine developers are counting on some trial participants to actually get sick with COVID-19, said Dr. Richard Novak, professor of medicine and chief of the infectious disease unit at the University of Illinois and one of the clinical trial investigators for Moderna. All participants will be warned that they could get the coronavirus.

“We’re not exposing people to COVID-19 or giving it to them, but we do have to find people who have a high risk of getting it,” Novak said. That’s how the companies will be able to compare infection rates among people who received the vaccine and those who didn’t.

The protocol for each study will differ slightly depending on the company and vaccine being tested. But all volunteers selected for a trial will be expected to complete the enrollment process in person at one of the more than 80 sites running the trials.

Clinical trial volunteers will be asked to sign “informed consent” documents saying they understand they may get a placebo and that if they get the vaccine, they could suffer side effects.

Possible side effects for COVID-19 vaccine trial participants

What kind of side effect? Sore arm, low fever and muscle aches — the typical side effects for all vaccines. Moderna said that chills, headache and fatigue were reported in its 45-person trial of the vaccine, too.

Patients in the trials will likely receive some compensation to cover their time and basic expenses. That will vary based on the location and trial sponsor.

Participants will be followed with phone calls and further visits to the study sites.
The Moderna trial, for example, will likely require about seven follow-up visits, weekly phone conversations and electronic diaries that participants will be expected to complete, Novak said. “If they develop symptoms consistent with COVID-19, we’ll bring them in or go to their home for an interim visit, collect samples, then keep tabs on them to see how they do,” he added. (Moderna did not respond to requests for details about the study protocols.)

Although Moderna’s entire process will last two years, Novak estimated, the frequency of face-to-face contact between participants will go way down over time, to once a month or potentially less.

Safety first

Despite the urgent demand for COVID vaccines that work, trial volunteers shouldn’t worry that corners are being cut on safety, said Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University.

That’s because clinical trials always have data safety monitoring boards, panels of independent experts with access to information about how the people who receive the actual vaccines are doing compared to those who get placebos.

“If adverse reactions of a certain seriousness start to occur in the vaccinated group, but not the [placebo] group, the trial can be stopped,” said Schaffner, who is not involved in the COVID-19 trials.

Or if the monitoring board looks at the interim data and determines there’s little chance the vaccine is effectively preventing the disease, it can end the trial, “because there’s no need to recruit additional volunteers and expose them to a vaccine that’s not working,” Schaffner said.

As of late July, more than 154,000 people had already volunteered to participate in the COVID-19 vaccine trials through the COVPN website. People who are interested in volunteering for trials that aren’t listed there can also find opportunities by visiting  Clinicaltrials.gov  and searching the keyword COVID-19.

Tom Smith, a 62-year-old technology research analyst in Raleigh, N.C., is eager to enroll in a COVID-19 vaccine trial, even though he knows it will be a source of anxiety for some of his family members — especially his 87-year-old dad.

“They would be very wary of me doing this,” Smith said. “But you’ve got to have people who are willing to test the different technologies. Anything I can do to help, I want to do.”

Microsoft  Corp. said it will move forward with plans to buy the U.S. operations of the hit video-sharing app TikTok, capping weeks of covert dealmaking that were almost upended by an 11th-hour intervention from President Trump.

The transaction could reshape the global tech landscape and further strain already tense U.S.-China relations.

Following a phone call Sunday between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Mr. Trump, the company put out a blog post saying it would move quickly to pursue discussions with TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. of Beijing and aims to complete the negotiations by Sept. 15. The statement, the software giant’s first confirmation it was interested in acquiring TikTok’s U.S. business, said the deal talks also entail the app’s service in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

“Microsoft appreciates the U.S. Government’s and President Trump’s personal involvement as it continues to develop strong security protections for the country,” the company said in its statement.
It added it would ensure that the data of American TikTok users is transferred to the U.S., where it would remain. Microsoft said TikTok operations under its ownership would build on the popular user experience while adding privacy and security protections.

For weeks, TikTok’s Chinese parent company has discussed selling the app’s U.S. business to Microsoft, in talks involving U.S. government officials. A deal seemed close Friday, but then Mr. Trump expressed opposition, saying he preferred an outright ban of the app and throwing a wrench into the talks.

The deal would land Microsoft the breakout social-media player of this decade. It would give Washington a win over Beijing by bringing a Chinese technology crown jewel under U.S. ownership. For TikTok parent ByteDance it would resolve the national-security concerns that threatened to thwart its U.S. operations.

The proposed transaction gained the blessing of senior Trump officials, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who saw value in an American company getting access to sophisticated TikTok algorithms that decide what videos users are served. Others, including Vice President Mike Pence, have voiced concerns. At a Friday morning meeting, officials from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which has been reviewing an earlier TikTok transaction, were told a Microsoft deal was imminent.

In Friday evening remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One, Mr. Trump said he opposed a Microsoft deal and wanted to use his executive authority to ban the app in the U.S., a move favored by hawkish trade adviser Peter Navarro.

The comments, when reported, floored those involved in the talks. ByteDance quickly made some concessions, saying CEO Zhang Yiming would sell his stake in TikTok. It wasn’t clear in the moment whether Mr. Trump was set on shutting TikTok out of the U.S. or simply negotiating. “Have you read ‘The Art of the Deal,’” one national-security official responded when asked.

The companies paused the talks as they sought clarity from the administration.
Mr. Trump recently heard from advisers inside and outside the White House about a need to save TikTok in the U.S. The app, filled largely with dance-offs and jokey skits, has become ingrained in the lives of millions of teenagers, some of them potential voters.

The negotiations over TikTok show the effects of Mr. Trump’s push to close U.S. borders to Chinese companies deemed potential national security threats—after decades of China keeping out many American firms—and also show how global corporations can be used as political bargaining chips. A deal with Microsoft buying TikTok’s U.S. operation would resolve one of the most dramatic corporate battles in the U.S.-China feud.

The race to rewrite TikTok’s destiny in the U.S. started in early July, after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo raised the possibility in a broadcast interview of banning the app in the U.S. Officials subsequently said the app posed a security threat.

U.S. officials have expressed concern that TikTok would let China’s authoritarian government have access to the data TikTok collects from Americans and other users. TikTok has said it would never hand over such data. Under China’s laws, companies operating there must comply with any government request to turn over data.

Officials also worry that the app could be used to spread Chinese propaganda and that the platform’s moderators are censoring content to appease Beijing. The Journal has reported that TikTok previously blocked videos related to politics, including those about the Hong Kong protests. More recently,  it has allowed some political content on the app . The State and Defense departments keep TikTok off employees’ government devices.

This account of what happened behind the scenes is based on interviews with people involved in the talks or familiar with the discussions.

ByteDance tried to avoid offloading TikTok’s U.S. operations, as Mr. Zhang believed TikTok could eventually challenge Facebook for users and ad revenue. TikTok globally isn’t profitable. ByteDance projects the app will have $1 billion in revenue this year and $6 billion next year, said a person familiar with it.

ByteDance increasingly tailors its content policies to the various places where it operates.
For Mr. Zhang, a tie-up with Microsoft would hand U.S. operations of his creation to a company with deep pockets to support it. But the tie-up would mean surrendering full control of the first Chinese app to be a global smash.

In a series of discussions with U.S. officials, ByteDance executives offered to create an independent TikTok board, separate from Bytedance, and proposed having a group of U.S. investors increase their stakes so they would own the majority of TikTok. Former  Walt Disney  Co. executive Kevin Mayer is TikTok’s CEO.

ByteDance’s investors include  SoftBank Group  Corp. of Japan’s Vision Fund as well as large funds such as General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital. ByteDance was valued at $100 billion in a March fundraising round. Some investors prepared a bid that valued TikTok as a stand-alone at more than $30 billion, according to one person briefed on the bid. Microsoft said it might invite other American investors to participate in its deal.

Some U.S. government officials embraced the majority-control proposal, seeing it as a way to argue that a Chinese technology crown jewel had fled the Chinese Communist Party and embraced the U.S.
Trump administration officials said they wanted TikTok to be fully American-owned, and simply allowing minority owners to increase their stakes wasn’t viewed as a win for the administration.

ByteDance officials were desperate to avoid a U.S. TikTok ban. TikTok’s largest market, India, recently blocked the app after a deadly border clash with China. A ban in the U.S. as well might have a domino effect, said Matthew Brennan, a China-based tech consultant.
A number of suitors were said to be intrigued by the idea of owning the app but Mr. Zhang zeroed in on Microsoft.

It was familiar territory. Mr. Zhang worked at Microsoft briefly in 2008 but left after a short stint because, he has told Chinese media outlets, he felt it stifled his creativity.

For Microsoft’s Mr. Nadella, buying TikTok would add a huge pool of mostly young social-media users to a company that has thrived during his tenure largely by focusing on corporate customers.

Mr. Nadella has done several big deals since taking over in 2014, including the acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016 and of coding-collaboration site GitHub Inc. in 2018. They expanded the company’s offerings beyond legacy products and targeted fast-growing areas such as cloud computing, helping the maker of Windows operating system software quintuple its market value in six years to $1.55 trillion.

Microsoft has had a more mixed experience with consumer-facing businesses. Its search engine Bing has struggled to gain traction against Google, and Microsoft largely abandoned the smartphone business after Mr. Nadella took over. In June, it shut down Mixer, its live-streaming service targeted mainly at videogame enthusiasts, and said it was working to move broadcasters and viewers over to Facebook.

TikTok could tie in with Microsoft’s most successful consumer-focused business line, its Xbox gaming platform, sales of which have boomed during the pandemic. Xbox also serves younger users, for whom videogames have come to function as social-media networks of their own, with players interacting and chatting in real-time over the internet. A deal also would add gender balance to the heavily male Xbox user base. A majority of TikTok users are female.

An acquisition also could bring risks of the kind Mr. Nadella has largely avoided. It would add to Microsoft’s already colossal size at a time when other large tech companies are under scrutiny for how they wield market power. Owning TikTok would thrust Microsoft into a sector, social media, beset by controversies over abuse, misinformation and free speech.

By late July, the framework was almost in place for a deal in which Microsoft would buy TikTok’s U.S. operations and Mr. Zhang would retain a minority stake.

As the debate continued, some inside the White House cautioned about a political downside to blocking the deal.  While TikTok has been used by Trump critics , some officials pointed out that many young Republicans also use the app, as well as the children of conservatives.

A prominent TikTok account that features young conservatives, called @ConservativeHypeHouse, posted to the platform pointing to seven billion views the hashtag #Trump2020 has received on TikTok, compared with the approximately 900,000 views #Biden2020 has received.

Teenagers across the U.S. also rallied to TikTok’s defense, posting videos with the hashtag #SaveTikTok, which has been viewed more than 730 million times. TikTok says it has 100 million users in the U.S.

Others in the White House appealed to the president’s skepticism of Facebook and  Twitter , arguing that TikTok represented competition for them. Mr. Trump’s team described the potential for two victories for the president: blocking the Chinese Communist Party from accessing user data and putting a U.S. company in charge of the app.

“Have an American company like Microsoft take over TikTok,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) tweeted Saturday night. “Win-win. Keeps competition alive and data out of the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.”

In addition to Messrs. Mnuchin and Pompeo, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, have been involved in trying to broker the deal, White House officials said.

Allies of the president reached out to Microsoft Saturday evening, urging it to post a simple, positive message on Twitter signaling that Microsoft wanted to help keep TikTok alive, and in American hands. These people told the company the president was warming to a deal and urged Microsoft officials to seize the opportunity.

In a statement posted on TikTok Saturday, Vanessa Pappas, TikTok’s U.S. general manager, assured users about the future of the platform. “I want to say thank you to the millions of Americans who use TikTok every day,” she said. “We’re not planning on going anywhere.”


Two NASA astronauts returned to Earth on Sunday in a dramatic, retro-style splashdown, their capsule parachuting into the Gulf of Mexico to close out an unprecedented test flight by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.

It was the first splashdown by U.S. astronauts in 45 years, with the first commercially built and operated spacecraft to carry people to and from orbit. The return clears the way for another SpaceX crew launch as early as next month and possible tourist flights next year.

Test pilots Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken arrived back on Earth in their SpaceX Dragon capsule named Endeavour, less than a day after departing the International Space Station and two months after blasting off from Florida. The capsule parachuted into the calm gulf waters about 40 miles off the coast of Pensacola, hundreds of miles from Tropical Storm Isaias pounding Florida’s Atlantic coast.

“Welcome back to planet Earth and thanks for flying SpaceX,” said Mission Control from SpaceX headquarters.

“It’s a little bit overwhelming to see everybody here considering the things that have gone on the last few months since we’ve been off planet,” Hurley said after arriving back home in Houston Sunday evening where they were greeted by a small masked-gathering of family and officials, including Musk.

Musk had rushed to Houston from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, to welcome them. He was clearly moved — and relieved — while addressing the group.

“I’m not very religious, but I prayed for this one,” he said.

The astronauts’ ride back to Earth was fast, bumpy and hot, at least on the outside.

The spacecraft went from a screaming orbital speed of 17,500 mph (28,000 kph) to 350 mph (560 kph) during atmospheric reentry, and finally to 15 mph (24 kph) at splashdown. Peak heating during descent was 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,900 degrees Celsius). The anticipated top G forces felt by the crew: four to five times the force of Earth’s gravity.

Within a half-hour of splashdown, the scorched and blistered 15-foot capsule was hoisted aboard a SpaceX recovery ship with a staff of more than 40, including doctors and nurses. To keep the returning astronauts safe in the pandemic, the recovery crew quarantined for two weeks and were tested for the coronavirus.

The opening of the hatch was held up briefly by extra checks for toxic rocket fumes outside the capsule. After medical checkups, the astronauts were flown by helicopter to Pensacola and then to Houston.

There was one unexpected problem that could have endangered the operation: Once the capsule was in the water, private boats “just made a beeline for it,” and got too close, said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, promising to do better next time at keeping sightseers on pleasure boats safely away. NASA video showed one vessel flying a large campaign flag for President Donald Trump.

The Coast Guard in Pensacola said it had deployed two vessels to keep the public at least 10 miles away from the capsule.

Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, who both attended the launch, congratulated the SpaceX and NASA teams.

“Great to have NASA Astronauts return to Earth after very successful two month mission. Thank you to all!” Trump tweeted.

The last time NASA astronauts returned from space to water was on July 24, 1975, in the Pacific, the scene of most splashdowns, to end a joint U.S.-Soviet mission known as Apollo-Soyuz. The Mercury and Gemini crews in the early to mid-1960s parachuted into the Atlantic, while most of the later Apollo capsules hit the Pacific. The lone Russian “splashdown” was in 1976 on a partially frozen lake amid a blizzard following an aborted mission; the harrowing recovery took hours.

Gemini and Apollo astronaut Thomas Stafford — the commander of the last crew to splash down — watched the reentry on TV from his Florida home. While pleased with the crew’s safe return, he wasn’t overly impressed. “It’s what we did over 50 years ago,” he said.

Its throwback splashdown aside, SpaceX made history with the mission, which launched May 30 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. It was the first time a private company launched people into orbit and also the first launch of NASA astronauts from home turf in nearly a decade. Hurley was the pilot of NASA’s last space shuttle flight in 2011 and the commander of this SpaceX flight.

NASA turned to SpaceX and also Boeing to build capsules and ferry astronauts to and from the space station, following the retirement of the shuttles. Until Hurley and Behnken rocketed into orbit, NASA astronauts relied on Russian rockets. SpaceX already had experience hauling cargo to the space station, bringing those capsules back to a Pacific splashdown.

“We are entering a new era of human spaceflight where NASA is no longer the purchaser, owner and operator of all the hardware. We’re going to be a customer, one customer of many,” Bridenstine said from Johnson Space Center in Houston. “I would love to see a fleet of crew Dragons servicing not just the International Space Station but also commercial space stations.”

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell called the mission a springboard to “doing even harder things,” like collaborating on astronaut flights to the moon and then Mars.

“There’s no question, it was an enormous relief after months of anxiety making sure we could bring Bob and Doug back home safely,” Shotwell said.

SpaceX needs six weeks to inspect the capsule before launching the next crew around the end of September. This next mission of four astronauts will spend a full six months aboard the space station. Hurley and Behnken’s capsule will be refurbished for another flight next spring. A Houston company run by a former NASA official, meanwhile, has partnered with SpaceX to send three customers to the space station in fall 2021.

“It took years to get here, we brought the capablity back to America, and we came home safely to our families, and it took a lot of people a lot of time to make that happen,” Behnken said back in Houston.
Boeing doesn’t expect to launch its first crew until next year. The company encountered significant software problems in the debut of its Starliner capsule, with no one aboard, last year. Its capsules will touch down in the U.S. Southwest desert.

By beating Boeing, SpaceX laid claim to a small U.S. flag left at the space station by Hurley and the rest of the last shuttle crew. Minutes after splashdown, Musk tweeted a flag emoji followed by “returned.”
Also on board: a toy dinosaur named Tremor, sent into space by the astronauts’ young sons. The two boys recorded a wake-up call for their fathers Sunday morning.

“Don’t worry, you can sleep in tomorrow,” said Behnken’s 6-year-old son Theo, who was promised a puppy after the flight. “Hurry home so we can go get my dog.”