South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Florida reports 7,515 new cases, nearly half from a month earlier
Florida’s new coronavirus cases appeared to be leveling off with the latest report down slightly from Friday.
Florida reported 7,515 new coronavirus cases on Saturday and another 118 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,821,937 cases since the pandemic began.
A month ago on Jan. 12, Florida reported 14,896 new cases. In addition, the sevenday average for new cases has been declining since Jan. 8 when it reached 17,991.
South Florida
South Florida reported 3,192 new cases on Saturday.
626 additional cases and 7 more deaths. The county now has 114,083 confirmed cases and 2,364 deaths, including 42 non-residents.
886 additional cases and 10 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 184,110 cases and 2,276 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 37 non-residents.
1,680 additional cases and 20 new deaths. The county now has 392,842 confirmed cases and 5,173 deaths, including 32 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 6.44% on Saturday, up from 6.22% 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 114,866 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 120,930 results reported the day before.
Palm Beach County: Test results for 8,044 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.71%. That’s up from 6.36% the previous day.
Broward County: Test results for 12,642 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.03%. That’s up from 6.45% the previous day.
Miami-Dade County:
Test results for 23,214 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.17%. That’s up from 6.20% the previous day.
Deaths
The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 28,683 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 496 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.
Florida reported 118 additional deaths from COVID Saturday after reporting 183 more on Friday.
Out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Florida ranks No. 25 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 4,681 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 584, Palm Beach County had 326 and Miami-Dade had 740
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.