Florida reports 277 COVID-19 deaths, tying state record

Florida’s daily COVID-19 death toll hit 277 Friday, tying the state record for resident and nonresident deaths from the disease.

Florida reported 13,719 new coronavirus cases on Friday and another 272 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,627,603 cases since the pandemic began.

The death toll tied the state record set Aug. 11, as the disease reached its summer peak.

South Florida

Palm Beach County: 811 additional cases and 17 more deaths. The county now has 101,019 confirmed cases and 2,113 deaths, including 30 non-residents.

Broward County: 1,176 additional cases and 7 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 163,896 cases and 2,046 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 35 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 2,299 additional cases and 34 new deaths. The county now has 354,704 confirmed cases and 4,709 deaths, including 31 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 12.37% on Friday, up from 8.54% 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 108,592 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 148,507 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 7,189 residents were reported Friday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 10.92%. That’s up from 7.29% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 8,741 residents were reported

Friday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 13.52%. That’s up from 7.14% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 20,909 residents were reported Friday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 10.83%. That’s up from 7.62% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 25,011 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 394 non-residents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Friday 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. 25 for cases per 100K residents, according to the latest data from the health department and the COVID Tracking Project.

As of Friday, there were 6,898 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 631, Palm Beach County had 448 and Miami-Dade had 985.

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.

In Florida, 1,059,041 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 4.93% of the population.

So far, 123,971 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 0.58% of the population.