State’s 99 deaths push US toll past 200,000 fatalities

The U.S. death toll from coronavirus moved over 200,000 on Tuesday after Florida reported 99 more resident deaths in its daily report from the Department of Health.

The U.S. tally tracked by the Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center was sitting on199,962 before the state’s update, which would move it to 200,061. Florida’s resident death toll is now at 13,416. With 163 non-resident deaths, the state toll is at 13,579.

The jump in reported deaths is normal for a Tuesday, as weekend numbers trend lower. Reported deaths are for fatalities that could have occurred days, weeks or even more than a month earlier.

The DOH also reported 2,470 new coronavirus cases, bringing statewide infections to 687,909 since the pandemic began.

The DOH hasn’t reported a daily infection increase above 10,000 since July 25.

The single-day high of 15,300 came on July 12. That number has been even lower in the last month with the DOH not reporting more than 5,000 cases per day since Aug. 15 except for a bump on Sept.1blamed on a data dump from Quest Diagnostics with test results dating back to April.

Testing has declined statewide, to a daily average of about 24,000 so far in September. That’s down from about 32,000 daily tests on average in August and 54,400 a day in July.

Over 5.1 million people have been tested in Florida, with 19,081 more tests in the latest report.

Statewide, the latest positivity rate reported by the Florida Department of Health was 5.88%, the highest in two weeks, but that’s for new cases only and excludes anyone who previously tested positive. For all cases including retests of those previously infected, the latest positivity rate is 7.55%.

Central Florida on Tuesday added 561 cases for a total of 108,302: 176 new cases in Orange for 39,232; 96 in Polk for 19,339; 70 in Osceola for 12,209; 77 in Volusia for 10,614; 27 in Seminole for 8,887; 73 in Brevard for 8,502; 26 in Lake for 7,339; and 16 in Sumter for 2,180.

Central Florida had 20 of Tuesday’s newly reported deaths as the region’s toll moved to 2,026 with six new fatalities in Volusia, five in Polk, four in Brevard, three in Lake and one each in Orange and Osceola counties, but none in Seminole or Sumter. Polk County, due to nursinghome outbreaks, has the most coronavirus fatalities in the region with 512, followed by 432 in Orange, 281 in Brevard, 226 in Volusia, 200 in Seminole, 172 in Lake, 138 in Osceola, and 65 in Sumter.

Central Florida accounts for nearly 16% of the cases statewide and 15% of the deaths.

South Florida, home to 29% of Florida’s population, accounts for about 42% of cases with 289,061 total. That includes 682 new cases reported Tuesday among Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties.

South Florida’s reported deaths on Tuesday rose by 45 for a total of 5,699, about 42% of the state’s total.

COVID -19 hospitalizations had been steadily falling from mid-July highs of over 8,000, but are about the same week over week.

Across the state, 2,307 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 as of about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday including 117 in Orange County, 50 in Osceola, 35 in Seminole and 29 in Lake. The state’s online tool updates several times throughout the day.

To date, 42,771 people have been hospitalized in Florida, the st a t e ’s COVID -19 dashboard shows. But those numbers could include cases that are weeks old.

The virus has infected over 31.3 million people and has killed over 965,000 worldwide, according to the Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center. Nationwide, over 6.8 million people have been infected and more than 200,000 are dead.