Florida sets a pandemic record today with 21,683 new COVID-19 cases reported. Florida now has 6.5% of US population and 21.4% of US COVID cases

Saturday, the state of Florida reported more new COVID-19 cases to the Centers for Disease Control than any previous day in the coronavirus pandemic: 21,683.

That’s a 12.1% jump over the previous record, Jan. 7’s 19,334 cases during the worst month of the pandemic. Daily case counts routinely surpassed 10,000 as the pandemic peaked a second time. In the succeeding months, daily case counts returned to 2,000 and 8,000.

The last half of July looks like the start of Florida’s third COVID-19 peak, as the case numbers reported Thursday (17,093), Friday (17,589) and Saturday mix in with Jan. 6-8 to comprise the top six individual case count days. The average over the last seven days is 15,817 cases.

By comparison, on July 12, 2020, the state reported a then-national record of 15,300 cases.

Florida, which represents about 6.5% of the U.S. population, accounts for about 21.4% of the country’s new cases.

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