Marion County continues to have the fewest number of COVID-19 patients in the tri-county area.
All told, 111 cases have been reported in the local area. The oldest is a 92-year-old Sumter County man who tested positive on Thursday, March 26, and the youngest appears to be an infant that tested positive in Lake County on Sunday.
As of late Sunday afternoon, 22 people had tested positive in Marion County, which includes one non-resident. The patients – 15 women and seven men – have an average age of 52 and two of them also remain hospitalized.
Fifteen live in Ocala, two each in Belleview and Summerfield and one each in Ocklawaha and Dunnellon.
Sixteen of those Marion County patients recently traveled to the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Wisconsin, Texas, New York, South Carolina, New Jersey and other Sunshine State cities. It remains unclear if one patient, a 59-year-old woman, has a recent travel history.
Sumter County leads the way in the tri-county area with 45 cases. The patients – 24 men and 21 women – all are county residents, with 36 of them living in The Villages. Their average age is 66 and 13 remain hospitalized.
Nineteen of those Sumter County patients have reported traveling recently. They visited a variety of destinations abroad and domestically that include Egypt, Belize, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, the Caribbean, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, California, Louisiana, New Jersey and other locations in Florida. It still hasn’t been determined if 15 of the other patients traveled recently.
Lake County currently has 44 cases of COVID-19. The patients, four of whom are non-residents, have an average age of 53. Twenty-two are men, 21 are women and nine remain hospitalized.
Sixteen of those testing positive in Lake County have traveled recently to Belize, the Caribbean, Spain, Europe, Mexico, Africa, the Netherlands,
New York, Colorado, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia and other parts of Florida. It’s unknown if another 17 of the patients traveled recently.
The overall test numbers in the three counties breaks down as:
- Lake County: 920 tests completed, 875 negative, one inconclusive and seven people awaiting testing
- Sumter County: 677 tests completed, 628 negative, four inconclusive and one resident awaiting testing
- Marion County: 491 tests completed, 469 negative and 101 awaiting testing.
All told, 4,950 people – 4,768 Floridians – have tested positive for COVID-19 across the Sunshine State. Sixty people have died as a result of the virus and 633 currently are hospitalized.