Orange County sees slight uptick in COVID-19 cases

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Orange County is seeing a slight uptick in COVID-19 cases, according to health officials.

The county now has a positivity rate of 2.9%, slightly higher than the 2.8% it has had for weeks. However, Orange County Health Officer Dr. Raul Pino said those numbers, however, are still very low.

More than 83,000 people have been tested in Orange County, and testing has doubled in the last five weeks.

Pino said half of all the cases in the last two weeks are people between the ages of 20 to 40 years old.

Dr. Raul Pino said the higher numbers are likely from Memorial Day weekend. It is not yet known what impact the downtown protests involving thousands will have.

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Monday marked the first day in almost a week that Florida did not hit the 1,000 mark on new cases.

Over the last five days, the state has seen the highest number of positive cases since the pandemic took hold of the state.

It comes just as Florida goes into Phase 2 of reopening, which includes bars and movie theaters.

However, Gov. Ron DeSantis isn’t linking the spike to his decision to get the economy back up and running, because, he said, more tests equals more known cases.

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Florida is doing about 30,000 tests a day, and the positive rate is around 4%.

But, DeSantis said, if you take out the nursing homes, agriculture community and the jails and prison, then it’s a very low rate.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said he would not be surprised if, in the next couple of weeks, we see another spike.

“People are out and about, we are in Phase 2, people are relaxing a bit more than (they) need,” he said.

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However, Dyer isn’t ready to say that the city and state opened too soon.

Miami has seen about a 5% positive rate. There was a time when counties saw a 10% positivity rate.

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