Fla. reports 11,541 new cases, 122 deaths

For the fourth time in a week, Florida has reported more than 10,000 new cases of COVID-19.

Florida reported 11,541 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday and another 122 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,155,335 cases since the pandemic began.

South Florida

Palm Beach County: 456 additional cases and 11 more deaths. The county now has 73,998 confirmed cases and 1,824 deaths, including 28 non-residents.

Broward County: 1,371 additional cases and 7 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 122,883 cases and 1,787 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 30 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 2,375 additional cases and 12 new deaths. The county now has 264,673 confirmed cases and 4,042 deaths, including 25 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 9.27% on Wednesday, down from 9.62% 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 122,397 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, up from 98,164 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 5,469 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 8.28%. That’s up from 8.19% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 18,127 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.51%. That’s down from 8.08% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 26,170 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 8.96%. That’s down from 9.02% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 20,204 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 286 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.

Hospitalizations

As of Wednesday, there were 4,624 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 430, Palm Beach County had 277 and Miami-Dade had 812.

Hospitalizations hit a peak in late July of about 9,500 patients statewide, then dipped as low as 2,011 on Oct. 19. The numbers steadily increased throughout November and December.