Community data report tracks coronavirus impact on Tampa Bay

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – A new report is tracking the impact coronavirus is having on Tampa Bay businesses.

In a series of data reports, the Tampa Bay Partnership, in collaboration with Community Foundation of Tampa Bay, United Way Suncoast and USF Muma College of Business are keeping tabs on the effects that COVID-19 is having on the local economy.

As the number of coronavirus cases in Tampa Bay grows, the first report found that the area is already being vulnerable based on community and business demographics.

The Tampa Bay metro area has 492,788 homes with one or more disabled persons. The percentage in Tampa Bay is 25.05 percent — more than both the state and national averages.

Those residents, according to the report, are disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of social distancing measures.

Also vulnerable to both health effects and employment loss is the population of residents who are 65 and older, a group that makes up 23.42 percent of the state’s population, an average that’s also significantly higher than the national 65 and older population of 16.42 percent.

Another at-risk Tampa Bay group is the thousands of retail workers who are now out of work and fighting an unreliable unemployment website.

More than 155,000 workers in the area now face reduced hours or join the 16.8 million people across the county who are now unemployed in the wake of the virus.

Using data compiled by non-partisan Washington, D.C.-based think tank, the Bookings Institution, Tampa Bay is the seventh most economically vulnerable to impacts brought forth by the coronavirus among 382 metropolitan areas across the country.

Florida so far has 16,364 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 354 people have died, as of Thursday afternoon. The United States has the most confirmed infections with over 432,000 confirmed cases.