17,854 new cases Thursday, an increase of 31% from day earlier
Florida reported 17,854 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, a 31% increase from the day before when 12,288 were reported.
At least 48,276 Floridians have died of COVID since the start of the pandemic.
Deaths are counted on the day they occur, not the day they are reported, and can take up to two weeks or more to be reflected in the data. On Thursday, according to the information Florida provided to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only three additional deaths were added. August remains the most deadly month of the pandemic, with 7,622 deaths in Florida.
The state is now averaging 14,227 new COVID-19 cases over a seven-day period, and is averaging 348 deaths over a seven-day period.
The rolling average of new COVID cases is roughly a 29% decrease from a week earlier, according to the CDC data.
There are also fewer patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Florida, down to 12,651 as of Friday, a 3% decrease from the previous day. Those cases account for 22% of the available beds, with 83% of the state’s beds in use overall. Data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Friday also show that 2,954 ICU beds in the state were given to COVID-19 patients, down 4.5% from the previous day and accounting for about 45%, of the total ICU beds.
Here are the latest statistics:
■Florida ranks 10th in the nation for average daily COVID cases per capita, and second for the average of daily COVID deaths per capita as of Sept. 10, according to New York Times data. According to the same data, Florida continues to rank first in the nation for the number of people hospitalized daily for COVID.
■Florida ranks third in the total number of COVID cases per capita, behind Tennessee (1) and North Dakota (2), and 12th for total number of deaths per capita, according to New York Times data.
On Thursday, Florida reported a decline in its positivity rate, though it remains one of the highest in the nation. The positivity rate in Florida declined from 15.2% to 13.5, a further indication the state may have passed the peak of the delta surge. The state releases positivity data weekly.