Daytona Beach, FL - The latest report from the Florida Department of Health shows that Volusia County has exceeded 1,000 positive COVID-19 cases.
Volusia started the month initially at 741 positive cases. At the time, the state had a total of 56,830 overall. Since then, the county added 316 cases over the past 17 days to bring Volusia up to its new total of 1,057 positive cases – which equates to an average of about 18 cases per day.
The increase also comes on the heels of one of the state's largest increases, with 3,207 new cases reported as of 11 a.m. this morning (June 18th), which has brought the state up to 85,926.
That means that the state added 29,096 cases since June 1st, which averages out to about 1,712 new cases a day.
To the north, Flagler County saw increases over time, albeit a lot slower than what Volusia experienced. In fact, Flagler County added no new cases on June 1st. The county started the month at 189 positive cases and jumped to 216 as of today (June 18th).
That's 27 cases in the last 17 days, which means only 1-2 cases were added per day on average.
Despite the jump in cases, Governor Ron DeSantis announced on Tuesday (June 16th) that he plans to keep Florida open, vowing that the state will still protect the "most vulnerable."
The announcement additionally caught flak from Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who claimed that the governor was acting “recklessly.”
Be sure to visit News Daytona Beach's Community Coronavirus Dashboard for updates regarding COVID-19.
