Florida hits 1.5 million cases of COVID-19

With more new cases, Florida on Tuesday announced more than 1.5 million people in the state have had COVID-19.

Florida reported 14,896 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday and another 156 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,503,482 cases since the pandemic began.

South Florida

In South Florida Tuesday an additional 4,822 people have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Palm Beach County: 753 additional cases and 3 more deaths. The county now has 93,295 confirmed cases and 2,004 deaths, including 29 non-residents.

Broward County: 1,121 additional cases and 10 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 152,645 cases and 1,972 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 34 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 2,948 additional cases and 11 new deaths. The county now has 331,649 confirmed cases and 4,479 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 10.59% on Tuesday, up from 10.55% the day before. This method of calculating positivity counts new infections only, but also counts repeat negative tests, which skews the figure downward. Florida, again, reported a positivity rate exceeding 10%.

According to the state, newly reported case numbers reflect the results of 137,843 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, up from 110,336 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 7,103 residents were reported Tuesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 10.22%.

That’s up from 8.85% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 12,869 residents were reported Tuesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 8.87%. That’s up from 8.61% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 31,141 residents were reported Tuesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 9.41%. That’s up from 8.92% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 23,227 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 358 non-residents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Tuesday 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. 21 for deaths per 100K residents and No. 23 for cases per 100K residents, according to the latest data from the health department and the COVID Tracking Project.

Hospitalizations

As of Tuesday, there were 7,714 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 652, Palm Beach County had 436 and Miami-Dade had 1,113.

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 December and have been increasing daily in January.

Vaccines

In Florida, 597,119 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 2.78% of the population.

So far, 51,234 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 0.24% of the population.