After a month of reduced infections, the COVID-19 positivity rate is on the rise again in Central Florida.
According to the state Department of Health’s most-recent weekly report of coronavirus numbers, all six counties in the Orlando metro are trending upward in infection rates, hitting a two-month high. Orange County crossed back over the 5% positivity rate that was formerly the threshold for removing the county’s mask mandate.
The other counties in the metro area fared even worse last week. Seminole County’s infection rate rose to over 8%, followed by Volusia (7.9%), Brevard (7.7%), Lake (7.1%) and Osceola (6%).
The news of Central Florida’s turn for the worse comes as the entire state is seeing an increase in cases of coronavirus. The positivity rate has skyrocketed to 5.2% from a low of 3.3% two weeks prior. The number of overall new cases climbed by over 4,000 week-over-week to 15,809, though it’s still roughly half the number of new cases seen the week of April 23.
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This article appears in Jun 30 – Jul 6, 2021.