South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
COVID-19 in Florida: 31,518 new cases, 217 more deaths
Florida reported 31,518 new coronavirus cases on Saturday and another 217 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,354,833 cases since the pandemic began.
This is a two-day total because no cases were announced on New Year’s Day.
South Florida
Palm Beach County: 2,082 additional cases and 13 more deaths. The county now has 84,972 confirmed cases and 1,937 deaths, including 29 non-residents.
Broward County: 2,500 additional cases and 15 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 140,110 cases and 1,893 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 31 non-residents.
Miami-Dade County: 5,314 additional cases and 51 new deaths. The county now has 304,187 confirmed cases and 4,266 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 10.09% on Saturday, down from 11.55% 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 96,638 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 144,215 results reported the day before.
Palm Beach County: Test results for 9,452 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 8.25%. That’s down from 9.90% the previous day.
Broward County: Test results for 7,746 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.93%. That’s down from 9.80% the previous day.
Miami-Dade County: Test results for 17,597 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 9.30%. That’s down from 9.92% the previous day.
Deaths
The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 21,890 Floridians have died from COVID19. In addition, 320 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.
Hospitalizations
As of Saturday, there were 6,109 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 561, Palm Beach County had 333 and Miami-Dade had 1,017.
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.