State reports 5,271 new COVID-19 cases, 46 more deaths

Florida reported 5,271 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday and another 46 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 2,217,368 cases since the pandemic began.

South Florida

Palm Beach County: 306 additional cases and 4 more deaths. The county now has 142,053 confirmed cases and 2,807 deaths, including 52 non-residents.

Broward County: 619 additional cases and 9 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 234,243 cases and 2,925 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 48 nonresidents.

Miami-Dade County: 1,057 additional cases and 5 new deaths. The county now has 480,483 confirmed cases and 6,175 deaths, including 45 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 state reported a daily positivity rate of 6.92% on Tuesday, down from 7.28% 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 76,269 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, up from 49,885 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 4,232 residents were reported Tuesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.07%. That’s up from 6.48% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 9,020 residents were reported Tuesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.93%. That’s down from 7.21% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 17,485 residents were reported Tuesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.09%. That’s down from 6.94% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 34,958 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 688 nonresidents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Tuesday 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 Tuesday, there were 3,349 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 483, Palm Beach County had 217 and Miami-Dade had 553.

Hospitalizations hit a peak in late July of about 9,500 patients statewide.

Vaccines

In Florida, 2,764,057 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 12.87% of the population.

So far, 5,798,487 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 27.00% of the population.