Axios reports of the 20 U.S. metro areas with the highest daily case growth, nine are in Florida, according to Nephron Research. Pensacola is among those nine hot spots: “Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers-Cape Coral, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, West Palm Beach-Boca Raton, Sarasota-Bradenton, Jacksonville and Pensacola are also in the top 20 metro areas, as of July 12.”
Escambia County has one more death (now 55 total) and 262 new cases – 226 are Florida residents, 16 tied to nursing homes, one to correctional, median age of 39 and positivity rate of 14.3% on 1,576 test results.
FDOH reports hospitalizations have increased by 17 to 221.
On June 30, Escambia County had a year-to-date total of 1,612 Florida residents with COVID-19 – covering 106 days. For the month of July (1-14), the county has 2,445 infected Florida residents.
On June 30, Escambia County had year-to-date 94 hospitalizations – less than one a day. For the month of July (1-14), the county has 127 new hospitalizations – nine per day.
This data is from the Florida Dept. of Health website.
Santa Rosa  had its largest single day for new cases – 109 Florida residents.  Positivity rate 14.7% and median age 35.
| as of July 15 | 7/13/20 | 7/14/20 | Increase |
| Total Cases | Â Â Â Â Â Â 291,629 | Â Â 301,810 | Â 10,181 |
| Fla Residents | Â Â Â Â Â Â 287,789 | Â Â 297,876 | Â 10,087 |
| Non-Fla. | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 3,840 | Â Â Â Â Â Â 3,934 | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 94 |
| Deaths Per DOH | Â Â Â Â Â Â 4,521 | 112 | |
| Escambia | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 4,483 | Â Â Â Â Â Â 4,745 | Â Â Â Â Â 262 |
| Okaloosa | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 1,445 | Â Â Â Â Â Â 1,532 | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 87 |
| Santa Rosa | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 1,412 | Â Â Â Â Â Â 1,523 | Â Â Â Â Â 111 |
If we just tried a little bit harder we could be number 1. Maybe some white militias from Jay Florida can come down here with their assault rifles strapped on and get some more of our citizens to free themselves from the horrible oppression of being forced to wear a mask.
We have a Republican-controlled Department of Health, led by an appointee of Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis has every reason to want the lowest number of positive cases reported and I would think he wouldn’t tolerant over reporting. Those questioning data now weren’t doing so in early June. We will continue to post the data released by DeSantis’ DOH. Locally, we have fought daily for the county to release as much information as possible – and it has been a battle every step of the way.
Steve, I agree with you. However, the labs are saying they sent the DOH the correct numbers, yet it was the DOH that reported the numbers wrong. The DOH has been dishonest from the beginning. So is this just another scheme by the DOH to discredit the labs?
AHCA reports 183 hospitalizations as of this morning, 38 less then what FDOH is reporting. The city dashboard shows 221 hospitalizations in its data and 196 for its bar graph. You would think after that 4 1/2 months our agencies would be able to provide consistent data. This along with the report yesterday that hospitals are claiming labs are over-reporting positive test results doesn’t really help the situation.