October 18 update: 40 new positive tests, no deaths
BY JENNIFER CABRERA
According to the state dashboard, Alachua County reported an increase of 40 positive COVID-19 tests, with an official test positivity rate of 3.00%. No new deaths were reported.
Of the people whose positive tests came back yesterday, zero were 65 or older, and 18 (69%) were college-aged.
A total of 71 deaths have been reported in the county, 31 of which were in long-term care. Paul Myers told the county commission last Tuesday that they’ve determined two of our deaths were non-Florida residents, so they will be removed from the total, but that hasn’t happened yet. Myers told the county commission this week that none of the recently-reported deaths actually occurred in the past 2 weeks.
The overall number of people (from all counties) hospitalized here for COVID-19 stayed at 57.
State COVID-19 hospitalizations decreased to 2,005 today, a record low since the peak in July.
The state reported 2,539 new positive tests (official positivity rate of 4.68%) and a net increase of 50 deaths, 20 of which were from long-term care facilities.
Changes in the number of deaths were reported on 33 different dates, going back to June 9. Changes by month: June (+1-1); August (+14); September (+13); October (+23). 4 were from Miami-Dade County.
The peaks are on July 30 (234) and August 4 (236), and the 7-day moving average peak is August 5 (224).
The 7-day average plateau between July 25 and August 7 has been stable since I started reporting the peaks on August 27.
Here is the full chart for context:
The state also publishes a chart of the percentage of new tests that are positive by day (this chart is for the whole state), and the official positive rate yesterday was 4.68%.
In Alachua County, the official positivity rate was 3.00%.
This chart shows the number of negative tests reported in Alachua County by day:
The 7-day moving average of new cases is at 71.7 through yesterday’s cases. Here is the 7-day average of new cases for the past 14 days: