10,603 new cases, 97 more deaths

Florida reported 10,603 new coronavirus cases on Sunday and another 97 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,365,436 cases since the pandemic began.

The U.S. death toll now tops 350,000 deaths, more than any other country.

Overall, more than 20.5 million people have tested positive for COVID-19 across the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University.

Worldwide, nearly 85 million people have tested positive for COVID-19 and more than 1.84 million people have died from the highly infectious coronavirus.

Florida made another grim record this week, reporting 93,457 new cases in the past week — the most since the pandemic began.

South Florida

Palm Beach County: 507 additional cases and 1 more death. The county now has 85,479 confirmed cases and 1,938 deaths, including 29 non-residents.

Broward County: 900 additional cases and 10 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 141,010 cases and 1,903 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 31 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 1,547 additional cases and 12 new deaths. The county now has 305,734 confirmed cases and 4,278 deaths, including 27 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 12.41% on Sunday, up from 10.09% 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 83,761 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 96,638 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 6,619 residents were reported Sunday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.58%. That’s down from 8.25% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 8,783 residents were reported Sunday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 10.42%. That’s up from 7.93% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 11,996 residents were reported Sunday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 13.06%. That’s up from 9.30% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 21,987 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 323 non-residents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Sunday happened over several weeks but confirmed in the past day.

Hospitalizations

As of Sunday, there were 6,109 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 561, Palm Beach County had 333 and Miami-Dade had 1,017.

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.