State reports 6,684 coronavirus cases and 80 more deaths
Even as more than 8 million Floridians are vaccinated with at least one dose, new COVID-19 cases per day continue to creep upward.
Florida reported 6,684 new coronavirus cases on Thursday and another 80 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 2,191,038 cases since the pandemic began.
In early January, the seven-day average for new cases had climbed as high as 17,991. It was 6,085 on Thursday.
South Florida
South Florida counties reported 2,,428 new cases Thursday. July 2020 was the worst month for cases in South Florida.
Palm Beach County: 528 additional cases and 6 more deaths. The county now has 140,374 confirmed cases and 2,790 deaths, including 52 nonresidents.
Broward County: 738 additional cases and 35 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 231,050 cases and 2,896 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 48 nonresidents.
Miami-Dade County: 1,162 additional cases and 18 new deaths. The county now has 475,231 confirmed cases and 6,121 deaths, including 44 nonresidents.
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 positivity rate in Florida dropped slightly on Thursday.
The state reported a daily positivity rate of 6.19% on Thursday, down from 6.26% 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, newly reported case numbers reflect the results of 107,050 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, up from 88,833 results reported the day before.
The positivity rate was slightly higher in Palm Beach and Broward counties on Thursday.
Palm Beach County: Test results for 8,325 residents were reported Thursday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.15%. That’s up from 5.56% the previous day.
Broward County: Test results for 12,380 residents were reported Thursday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.80%. That’s up from 5.78% the previous day.
Miami-Dade County: Test results for 19,609 residents were reported Thursday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.95%. That’s down from 6.50% the previous day.
Deaths
Florida continues to add more COVID deaths to the count each day, but the count has been below 100 for most of April.
The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 34,696 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 682 nonresidents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Thursday 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 100K residents and No. 16 for cases per 100K residents, according to the latest data from the health department and the COVID Tracking Project.
Hospitalizations
As of Thursday, there were 3,410 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 496, Palm Beach County had 218 and Miami-Dade had 598.
Hospitalizations hit a peak in late July of about 9,500 patients statewide.
Vaccines
More than 8.3 million people in Florida have received one or more doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.
In Florida, 2,914,093 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 13.57% of the population.
So far, 5,314,185 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 24.74% of the population.