October 23 update: 88 new positive tests, no deaths

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

According to the state dashboard, Alachua County reported an increase of 88 positive COVID-19 tests, with an official test positivity rate of 4.24%. No new deaths were reported.

Of the people whose positive tests came back yesterday, 7 were 65 or older, and 40 (55%) were college-aged.

A total of 74 deaths have been reported in the county, 33 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.

The overall number of people (from all counties) hospitalized here for COVID-19 decreased from 55 to 51.

State COVID-19 hospitalizations increased to 2,114 today.

The state reported 3,689 new positive tests (official positivity rate of 4.00%) and a net increase of 73 deaths, 27 of which were from long-term care facilities.

Changes in the number of deaths were reported on 39 different dates, going back to July 17. Changes by month: July (+2), August (+3-1); September (+12-5); October (+62).

The peaks are on July 30 (235) and August 4 (237), and the 7-day moving average peak is August 5 (225).

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 4.00%.

In Alachua County, the official positivity rate was 4.24%.

This chart shows the number of negative tests reported in Alachua County by day:

The 7-day moving average of new cases is at 83 through yesterday’s cases. Here is the 7-day average of new cases for the past 14 days: