Florida reports nearly 5,570 new cases
Officials blame private company for delayed COVID-19 data release
Florida’s Department of Health on Sunday reported 5,570 new cases of COVID-19, the highest number of new infections since August. The numbers reflect two days worth of new cases aswell as 178 additional deaths.
Florida had been averaging about 2,400 cases and 90 deaths per day on the state reports. Sunday’s number represent an average of 2,785 cases a day. There were 2,908 new cases and 118 deaths listed on Friday’s report.
The newly reported data comes after Florida health officials announced Saturday they were delaying the release of the coronavirus report because a laboratory on Friday night dumped about 400,000 test results that had previously been submitted. The data dump mucked up the ability to accurately process the state’s much-watched pandemic data.
Officials blamed the problem on a private company called Helix Laboratory, saying it would take time to “de-duplicate” the results. However, the state said there was no delay in people finding out if they were infected with the disease. On Sunday the state reported a total of 734,491 positive cases since the start of the pandemic. In total, there have been15,364 Florida resident deaths from the virus and 188 non-resident deaths.
However, the state report indi
cates the results of a much lower than average number of tests results from Friday anda higher number of tests from Saturday. The daily results have ranged from about 40,000 to 70,000 results per day. Health officials reported lab results for 114,674 individuals for Saturday and results for 24,585 individuals on Friday. It’s unclear what effect the removal of duplicate data played in these results. Overall, health officials reported that 5.5 million people in Florida have been tested for the virus since the pandemic began.
The state explained the highly watched positivity rate in this way: “A data dump of previously reported lab results prevented the reporting system from normal processing of lab results on Oct. 9, causing an inaccurate representation of data from Oct. 9 and Oct. 10. The most accurate way to interpret positivity for these two days is an average, whichwas 4.24%. The average is slightly lower than 4.55% on Thursday. Public health officials say it’s safe to reopen when the rate is under 5%.
Other tallies show a higher positivity rate depending on the source and method. For example, Johns Hopkins University, which doesn’t exclude repeated results for the same individual, reported Florida’s 7-day average positivity rate to be 10.1%.
South Florida
Broward County: 537 additional confirmed coronavirus cases. The county has tallied a total of 79,332 reported cases and 1,467 deaths since the pandemic began.
Palm Beach County: 307 additional cases of COVID-19. The county has had a reported 47,955 cases and1,446 deaths.
Miami-Dade County: 1,006 additional cases and 30 more fatalities. The county has had a reported total of 175,118 cases and 3,439 deaths.
Testing and positivity rates
More than 5.55 million people have been tested in Florida since the pandemic began, producing an overall positivity rate of 13.22%, state data show. At least 734,491 people have tested positive and 4.81 million have tested negative.
In South Florida, the data dump resulted in the state issuing a two-day average for the positivity rate. In Broward County, the positivity rate was 4.37% for Friday and 3.66% for Saturday. In Palm Beach County the positivity rate was 8.83% for Friday and 2.32% for Saturday. In Miami-Dade County, the positivity ratewas 7.83% for Friday and 4.48% for Saturday. Overall, 78,645 people in Broward County have tested positive for COVID-19, 47,538 in Palm Beach County have tested positive for COVID-19 and 173,932 people in Miami-Dade have tested positive.
Hospitalizations
As of 1 p.m. Sunday, 2,122 people across the state were hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of COVID-19. The number is slightly down from Friday when 2,140 people across the state were hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of COVID-19.