State reports 3,075 new COVID cases and 39 additional deaths

As vaccines roll out in Florida, the number of new cases appears to be leveling off.

Florida reported 3,075 new coronavirus cases on Monday and another 39 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 2,245,853 cases since the pandemic began.

In early January, the seven-day average for new cases had climbed as high as 17,991. It was 4,885 on Monday.

South Florida

South Florida counties reported 1,363 new cases Monday. July 2020 was the worst month for cases in South Florida.

Palm Beach County: 195 additional cases and 4 more deaths. The county now has 143,904 confirmed cases and 2,828 deaths, including 54 non-residents.

Broward County: 443 additional cases and 1 more death. Broward has a known total of 237,510 cases and 2,953 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 48 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 725 additional cases and 4 new deaths. The county now has 486,025 confirmed cases and 6,233 deaths, including 47 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 6.14% on Monday, up from 5.87% 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 51,344 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 66,674 results reported the day before.

The positivity rate was up slightly on Monday in Palm Beach and Broward counties.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 3,365 residents were reported Monday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.91%. That’s up from 4.76% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 7,629 residents were reported Monday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.85%. That’s up from 5.21% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 13,784 residents were reported Monday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.35%. That’s down from 5.71% the previous day.

Deaths

The number of deaths per day from Covid-19 has remained below 100 for the last month and has been below 50 for the last two days.

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 35,307 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 702 non-residents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Monday 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 mid-day Monday, 3,096 people are 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 418 Covid-19 hospitalizations, Palm Beach County had 198 and Miami-Dade had 489.

Hospitalizations from Covid-19 hit a peak in late July of about 9,500 patients statewide. They rose slightly in mid-April but are beginning to level off again.

Vaccines

Nearly 8.9 million people in Florida have received one or more doses of a COVID vaccine. As of Monday morning, Florida ranks 36th in the country for the percentage of the population fully vaccinated and 28th for the percentage of population vaccinated with at least one dose, according to the CDC tracker.

In Florida, 2,565,696 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 11.95% of the population.

So far, 6,328,296 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 29.46% of the population.