Florida tops 2 million COVID-19 cases

Florida reported 5,105 new coronavirus cases on Saturday and another 62 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 2,004,362 cases since the pandemic began.

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

South Florida

South Florida reported

2,305 new cases on Saturday. Palm Beach County: 339 additional cases and 1 more deaths. The county now has

127,830 confirmed cases and

2,645 deaths, including 49 non-residents.

Broward County: 691 additional cases and 11 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 207,580 cases and 2,636 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 45 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County:

1,275 additional cases and 8 new deaths. The county now has 433,452 confirmed cases and 5,765 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 5.39% on Saturday, up from 5.02% 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 93,462

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

101,591 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 6,210 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.27%. That’s up from

4.82% the previous day. Broward County: Test results for 11,960 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.79%. That’s up from

5.49% the previous day. Miami-Dade County: Test results for 21,981 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.70%. That’s down from 5.84% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of

32,713 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 624 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.

18 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

2,853 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 440, Palm Beach County had 182 and Miami-Dade had 554.

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.