18 Hillsborough Cities with COVID Cases, Up from 11 Last Week (Apr 1, 2020)

– Gypsy C. Gallardo for Power Broker Media Group

Yesterday’s Florida COVID-19 Report by Florida Department of Health (FDOH) showed 18 cities in Hillsborough County with COVID-positive residents, That represents a geographic spread of the virus over the past week. On March 24th, FDOH reported 11 cities with Coronavirus victims. Since then, new cases are reported in several cities, including Lithia, Thonotosassa, Tampa Palms, Seffner and Sun City Center. In all, Hillsborough has 305 victims of the virus as of last night’s detailed report by FDOH.

We have yet to see whether Hillsborough County’s #StayAtHome order is making an impact. It went into effect late last week, instigated by the urging of Tampa Mayor Jane Castor. Her city will have the toughest fight to battle the contagion. At mid-morning on Sunday, Tampa has the highest number of Florida resident cases in Hillsborough County (200 cases or 72% of the county total), followed by Riverview (21 cases), and Brandon (15 cases).

Here is a breakdown of the cities of residence for 278 COVID-positive people in Hillsborough County as of 10 AM yesterday (please note, state officials do not provide cities of station for the nine COVID-positive people who are in Hillsborough but who are non-Florida residents, put FDOH did not report data on three Florida residents in Hillsborough in the March 31st report used in this analysis).

Here is a snapshot of the increase in case numbers across cities in Hillsborough. Tampa leads this dubious line-up with 93 new cases in the space of the past five days (from end of day on March 24th to 10 AM on March 31st). But other cities are seeing rapid growth, relative to their numbers.

As examples, Brandon tripled its case count over the last five days reported. Notice that Valrico gained four cases in this five-day stretch, which is almost all of its total five cases as of last night. All of Sun City Center’s three cases are new within the past week.