Palm Beach County July 17 COVID-19 Update
According to the Florida Department of Health Palm Beach County has a total of 24,361 positive cases of COVID-19. While Florida has 327,241 total cases.
With each day, hundreds of new cases are confirmed across the county. On July 14 there were 494 new cases. July 15 saw 914 positive cases and July 16 had 645 confirmed cases.
The death toll statewide is 4,805 with 659 in Palm Beach County. Hospitalization rates across the county remain at 9% with 2,182 residents hospitalized due to COVID-19.
The Trump administration now requires hospitals nationwide to report their COVID-19 data to a different federal database in lieu of regular reporting to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Florida Dept. of Health
“It’s currently unclear why the Trump Administration has asked states and hospitals to upend their reporting systems in the middle of a pandemic- in 48 hours nonetheless- without a single explanation as to why this new system is better or necessary,” said Senator Patty Murray according to the National Public Radio website. “The Trump Administration is going to have to give a full justification for this, because until they do, it’s hard to see how this step won’t further sideline public health experts and obscure the severity of this crisis.”
“No one is taking access or data away from the CDC,” CDC Director Robert Redfield defended according to this NPR article.
“I’m very surprised that we are being mandated to report into a parallel system when hospitals have gotten used to reporting into NHSN,” commented Dr. Grace Lee, a pediatric infectious disease physician and associate chief medical officer at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. “It’s adding burden at a time when hospitals again are now responding to the surge of COVID-19. The timing couldn’t be worse, to be honest.”
All statistics and figures gathered in this article are coming from the Florida Department of Health website. Information on COVID-19 can be found broken down by individual county here: http://ww11.doh.state.fl.us/comm/_partners/covid19_report_archive/county_reports_latest.pdf
