State reports 5,178 new COVID-19 cases, 72 more deaths
Florida reported 5,178 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday and another 72 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 2,222,546 cases since the pandemic began.
South Florida
Palm Beach County: 403 additional cases and 5 more deaths. The county now has 142,456 confirmed cases and 2,813 deaths, including 53 non-residents.
Broward County: 456 additional cases and 9 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 234,699 cases and 2,934 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 48 non-residents.
Miami-Dade County: 914 additional cases and 10 new deaths. The county now has 481,397 confirmed cases and 6,185 deaths, including 45 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 5.76% on Wednesday, down from 6.92% 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 89,385 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, up from 76,269 results reported the day before.
Palm Beach County: Test results for 6,715 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.87%. That’s down from 7.07% the previous day.
Broward County: Test results for 9,729 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 4.90%. That’s down from 6.93% the previous day.
Miami-Dade County: Test results for 17,450 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.19%. That’s down from 6.09% the previous day.
Deaths
The numbers of hospitalized COVID patients and deaths in South Florida have declined.
The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 35,030 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 692 non-residents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Wednesday 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 Wednesday, there were 3,299 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 458, Palm Beach County had 204 and Miami-Dade had 543.
Vaccines
In Florida, 2,741,216 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 12.76% of the population.
So far, 5,884,717 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 27.40% of the population.