Cases
Despite continued vaccination efforts, the small spike in cases in March continued into April, most likely due to new more contagious variants of the virus (B.1.1.7) and relaxing of social distancing by the population. It appears we reached the top of this peak mid-April as the the 7-day average of new cases (355 per day) is below the peak.   The number of new cases per day is still higher than Aug/Sep of 2020, which was our previous low point.

Median Age of the infected

At the end of March, median age of those infected   was 33 years old.   [The median age of Florida residents is 42.2 ]   The average age of those infected in the last seven days is 32.7 years old. On April 5th Orange County opened vaccination eligibility to all adults and 16&17 year olds with a parent or guardian present. As all age groups have the opportunity to be vaccinated, I expect the median age to start to rise over time.

Deaths
The number of deaths per day has decreased to a reported 2 per day, (60 total) in April. The summer peak (June 22nd 2020 to July 22nd, 2020)   had 6.97 average deaths per day (223 total deaths), so the number of deaths is around 25% of our worst month.

Percent Positivity
These numbers are slightly worse than in March, with every day out of the last 14 over 5%, and 4 days above 7%.     Community spread is not fully under control.

How many people have been vaccinated

The Florida department of health reports that as of April 30th 2021,    379,335 Orange County residents   (27.2% of the population) have been fully vaccinated (This is a gain of +224,224 in the last month), and another 161,773 have received their first dose (out of two) of a COVID-19 Vaccine, which will grant partial immunity.     [Full protection is not achieved until two weeks after the second dose, but some protection begins to appear within 10 days of the first dose.]

Orange County reports the percentage of the population who have received at least one dose as 43.66%, which makes me think they are using a number somewhere between the 2010 census data (1,145,956 – giving 47%) and the 2019 estimate from the US Census Bureau (1,393,452 – giving 38%) for the population of orange county, so I suspect their population number is ignoring those under 16 years old.
[Update: The orange county public information officer told me that the number of 16+ residents in orange county was 1.17 million.]

Orange County plans to lift the requirement for masks outdoors in Phase 2, when 50% of the population has been vaccinated, and lift the requirement for masks indoors when 70% of the population has been vaccinated (and/or the percent positivity rate drops below 5%).

How many people have been infected

The US Census bureau estimated that Orange County Florida has a population of 1,393,452 people (July 1st, 2019).     The Florida Department of Health reports that   that   136,673   cases of COVID-19 (confirmed by either a positive PCR or Antigen test result) have occurred in Orange County so far.     That means at least 9.8 percent ( 136,673 / 1393452 =     .09808231) of the population has been infected. The actual percentage is likely to be much higher as many asymptomatic cases may never be detected.

How many people have been hospitalized or died

Of those confirmed infected, 2,739 or 2   percent ( 2739 / 136673 = 0.02004053) have been hospitalized, and 1,249 have died.   The death toll is currently 0.91 percent of all detected cases ( 1249 / 136673 =     .00913860).

Florida average percentages for hospitalizations and deaths are 4.1% and 1.6% so Orange County has done better than the rest of the state of Florida for hospitalizations and mortality.

Predictions for May:
At the end of March, when case numbers were around 350 a day, I predicted that case numbers would be in the sub-200 per day range as vaccination efforts began to catch up with new more infectious variants. Instead, the spike continued upward to a high of 450 a day before falling back down to the 350 per day range. So the only real improvement in April is that the number of vaccinated people more than doubled.

I continue to expect that case numbers will decline in May, hopefully reaching the 200-per day number by the end of the month.

Demand for vaccines appears to have dropped off, with almost no waiting at vaccination sites and some of the larger mass vaccination sites being closed. I expect we may vaccinate fewer people in May than we did in April. The vaccination efforts should allow the number of deaths to continue to fall.

[Charts/Numbers used can be found in this open document spreadsheet: orange_county_florida.ods ]