Florida reports 5,244 new cases, 80 deaths

Florida reported 5,244 new coronavirus cases on Saturday and another 80 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,973,109 cases since the pandemic began.

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

South Florida

South Florida reported

2,381 new cases on Saturday. Palm Beach County: 421 additional cases and 0 more deaths. The county now has

125,506 confirmed cases and

2,591 deaths, including 46 non-residents.

Broward County: 714 additional cases and 8 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 203,336 cases and 2,584 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 43 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County:

1,246 additional cases and 13 new deaths. The county now has 426,149 confirmed cases and 5,692 deaths, including

41 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 5.16% on Saturday, up from 4.88% 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 100,089

COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 105,325 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 8,087 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.12%, holding steady from the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 11,065 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.32%. That’s up from 5.71% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 21,279 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.88%. That’s up from 5.74% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of

32,225 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 604 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. 24 for deaths per

100K residents and No. 20 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

3,113 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 450, Palm Beach County had 209 and Miami-Dade had 586.

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.