State reports 15,019 new cases, 106 more deaths

Florida saw a spike in coronavirus cases from the previous day, but a drop in new deaths.

Florida reported 15,019 new coronavirus cases on Saturday and another 106 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,713,589 cases since the pandemic began.

The seven-day average for new cases has been declining since January 8.

South Florida

South Florida reported

2,354 new cases on Saturday. Palm Beach County:

1,151 additional cases and

0 more deaths. The county now has 106,691 confirmed cases and 2,202 deaths, including 36 non-residents.

Broward County: 1,373 additional cases and 11 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 172,082 cases and 2,118 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 36 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County:

2,505 additional cases and

28 new deaths. The county now has 370,642 confirmed cases and 4,877 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 6.62% on Saturday, down from 14.46% 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 222,516

COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, up from

75,179 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 16,537 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.80%. That’s down from 12.22% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 21,362 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.41%. That’s down from 13.52% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 43,059 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of

5.72%. That’s down from

14.77% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of

26,360 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 435 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 227 additional deaths from COVID after reporting 153 more on Monday.

Out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Florida ranks No. 25 for deaths per 100K residents and No.

25 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

6,153 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 640, Palm Beach County had 418 and Miami-Dade had 908.

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.