State officials report 15,445 new resident cases, 138 deaths

Florida reported 15,445 new coronavirus cases on Saturday and another 138 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,464,697 cases since the pandemic began.

The number of people vaccinated continued to rise Saturday, with a total of 478,443 people receiving the first dose and 35,857 receiving the second. Both vaccines approved for use in the United States require two doses.

South Florida

Palm Beach County: 991 additional cases and 12 more deaths. The county now has 91,049 confirmed cases and 1,984 deaths, including 29 non-residents.

Broward County: 1,224 additional cases and 12 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 149,168 cases and 1,949 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 34 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 2,705 additional cases and 33 new deaths. The county now has 324,260 confirmed cases and 4,392 deaths, including 27 non-residents.

Testing and positivity

Public health experts say the virus is considered under control when the COVID-19 test positivity rate is under 5%. But since Oct. 29, Florida has exceeded 5% in its widely publicized calculation for assessing the rate for testing of residents.

The state reported a daily positivity rate of 10.77% on Saturday, down from 11.43% the day before. This method of calculating positivity counts new infections only, but also counts repeat negative tests, which skews the figure downward.

According to the state, the new reported case numbers reflect the results of 140,344 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 168,052 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 9,911 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 9.61%. That’s down from 9.76% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 13,338 residents were reported

Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 9.36%. That’s down from 9.81% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 27,914 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 9.39%. That’s down from 10.20% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 22,804 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 346 non-residents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Saturday happened over several weeks but were just confirmed in the past day.

Out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Florida ranks

No. 21 for deaths per 100K residents and No. 23 for cases per 100K residents, according to the latest data from the health department and the COVID Tracking Project.

Hospitalizations

As of Saturday, there were 7,452 people hospitalized in Florida with a primary diagnosis of COVID-19, according to the state Agency for Health Care Administration.

In South Florida, Broward County reported 613, Palm Beach County had 423 and Miami-Dade had 1,054.

Hospitalizations hit a peak in late July of about 9,500 patients statewide, then dipped as low as 2,011 on Oct. 19. The numbers steadily increased throughout November and December.