Daily cases near recent peak of 10K

Health officials reported an uptick in new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday from the day prior, edging closer to the 10,000 new cases reported three days in a row last week.

Florida reported 9,592 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday and another 84 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,083,362 cases since the pandemic began.

South Florida

South Florida now has 435,785 confirmed cases, nearly 3,601 more than Tuesday.

Palm Beach County: 459 additional cases and 6 more deaths. The county now has 70,314 confirmed cases and 1,772 deaths, including 27 non-residents.

Broward County: 1,014 additional cases and 9 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 116,428 cases and 1,750 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 30 non-residents.

Miami-DadeCounty: 2,128 additional cases and 4 new deaths. The county now has 249,043 confirmed cases and 3,953 deaths, including 23 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 8.62% on Wednesday, up from 7.90% the day before. This method of calculating positivity counts new infections only, but also counts repeat negative tests, which skews the figure downward.

The positivity rate for Florida is now approaching the 9.16% positivity rate reported on Dec. 1.

According to the state, the new reported case numbers reflect the results of 109,484 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, up from 99,221 results reported the day before.

PalmBeachCounty: Test results for 6,122 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.35%. That’s down from 8.03% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 13,056 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.74%. That’s up from 6.97% the previous day.

Miami-DadeCounty: Test results for 27,270 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily posi