INSIDE Page 9

Florida will give COVID vaccines to 1 6 and 1 7-year-olds when all adults become eligible.

Florida reported 5,883 new coronavirus cases on Saturday and another 26 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 2,039,062 cases since the pandemic began.

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

South Florida

South Florida counties reported 2,463 new cases on Saturday.

Palm Beach County: 454 additional cases and zero new deaths. The county now has 130,358 confirmed cases and 2,687 deaths, including

52 nonresidents. Broward County: 704 additional cases and nine more deaths. Broward has a known total of 211,935 cases and 2,668 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 45 nonresidents.

Miami-Dade County:

1,305 additional cases and five new deaths. The county now has 441,275 confirmed cases and 5,839 deaths, including 42 nonresidents.

Testing, 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 6.27% on Saturday, up from 5.69% 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 90,742

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

101,236 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 6,609 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.55%. That’s up from

5.21% the previous day. Broward County: Test results for 9,811 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.21%. That’s up from

6.78% the previous day. Miami-DadeCounty: Test results for 21,960 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of

5.82%. That’s up from 5.23% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 33,142 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 641 nonresidents 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. 23 for deaths per 100,000 residents and No. 18 for cases per 100,000 residents, according to the latest data from the health department and the COVID Tracking Project.

Hospitalizations

As of Saturday, there were

2,831 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 448, Palm Beach County had 191 and Miami-Dade had 522.

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.

Vaccines

In Florida, 2,470,806 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 11.50% of the population.

So far, 3,004,403 people have been fully vaccinated. That represents about 13.99% of the population.