Florida's Daily Case Total Now Has 5 Digits

With more than 10,000 new coronavirus cases reported Thursday, Florida has reached nearly unique levels of the outbreak. In the US, only New York has reported a larger one-day increase, with 12,847 new positive cases on April 10. Even when the pandemic was at its worst in Europe, no nation there had daily increases to rival Florida's, Reuters reports. The picture has worsened quickly in the past month. Infections were up 168% in June, with more than 95,000 new cases. At the end of May, 4% of the coronavirus tests taken turned out positive; that rate is now 15%. Gov. Ron DeSantis said Florida residents lost urgency to be careful after the coronavirus totals were lower during April and May, per NPR. "After Memorial Day, when it fell out of the news, people kind of just thought it was over," he said.

Some local governments have since started requiring people to wear masks in public, but DeSantis has not issued a statewide order. (Unlike in Texas, as of Thursday.) Jacksonville, where President Trump is scheduled to accept the Republican Party's presidential nomination next month, has imposed a requirement to wear face coverings. DeSantis did close bars last week to indoor patrons, in scaling back the state's reopening. The nation also set a one-day record on Wednesday, with more than 50,000 new cases. "We are not flattening the curve right now," said the federal government's testing coordinator. "The curve is still going up." Dr. Anthony Fauci put it similarly Thursday, per the Washington Post. "I think it’s pretty obvious that we are not going in the right direction," he said. (More coronavirus stories.)