Less than 12 hours after Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his phase one plan for reopening the state, the Florida Department of Health reported 497 new cases of coronavirus and 50 new fatalities as a result of the respiratory illness Thursday morning.
Those new numbers bring the total cases of COVID-19 in the state to 33,690 and the total number of deaths to 1,268 since the first case was reported in Florida on March 1.
Since the coronavirus was first detected in Florida, 5,589 patients with serious cases of COVID-19 have required hospitalization as of Thursday.
The state does not release current hospitalization numbers but the governor said earlier in the week the current patients are about half the overall total shown on the state dashboard.