COVID-19 Surges In Florida With 20K New Cases Reported Wednesday: CDC

FLORIDA — COVID-19 cases in Florida are skyrocketing with more than 20,000 new cases reported Wednesday, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The 20,194 positive cases added marks the highest number of new cases the Sunshine State has seen in a single day since Sept. 1. Another 12,915 new cases were reported Tuesday.

While that's a far cry from Florida's summertime coronavirus surge, when tens of thousands of cases were reported daily for weeks and some weeks saw more than 150,000 new cases, it's still a significant jump in new COVID-19 cases.

This increase comes as the omicron variant has overtaken delta as the dominant variant in the United States. Federal health officials estimate that omicron accounts for about 73 percent of new cases in the country.

It’s especially prevalent in the Southeast region, which includes Florida, where 95.2 percent of COVID-19 specimens tested for specific variants during the week ending Dec. 18 were reported to be omicron, according to the CDC.

The number of all new coronavirus cases more than doubled in Florida last week. During the week of Dec. 10-16, 29,568 new cases and a 5.4 percent new case positivity rate were reported statewide, according to data from the Florida Department of Health.

The week prior to that, Dec. 3-9, saw 13,530 new cases and a 2.6 percent new case positivity rate, FDOH said. The agency releases its data on COVID-19 cases weekly.

Related Story: Omicron Cases Explode In Florida: See Latest CDC Data

Florida can expect to a “seasonal” jump in coronavirus cases this winter, Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a news conference in Ocala Dec. 17.

Despite this anticipated increase, the governor has vowed that the state won’t see any mask requirements or other pandemic-related mandates, WPTV reported.

"We are not going to indulge in any of the insanity that you see starting to happen again in some of these parts of the country," DeSantis said. "You have universities in different parts of the country that force every student to do vax, force them to mask, probably force them to booster, and they're still shutting down."

Taking aim at Dr. Anthony Fauci, DeSantis tweeted Monday, “We will not allow our communities to descend into Faucian dystopias in which people's freedoms are curtailed and their livelihoods destroyed.”

The governor added, "COVID authoritarianism is meant to be perpetual. They want a permanent mask mandate on commercial air travel and no doubt would impose additional lockdowns if they thought they could get away with it."