Florida reports 13,990 new cases, 169 deaths

Florida reported 13,990 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday and another 169 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,517,472 cases since the pandemic began.

South Florida

South Florida reported 4,337 new cases of COVID19 on Wednesday.

Palm Beach County: 699 additional cases and 8 more deaths. The county now has 93,994 confirmed cases and 2,012 deaths, including 29 non-residents.

Broward County: 1,070 additional cases and 5 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 153,715 cases and 1,977 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 34 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 2,568 additional cases and 20 new deaths. The county now has 334,217 confirmed cases and 4,499 deaths, including 27 non-residents.

Testing, 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 10.14% on

Wednesday, down from 10.59% 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 134,777 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 137,843 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 7,177 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 9.66%. That’s down from 10.22% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 11,392 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 9.22%. That’s up from 8.87% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 27,356 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 9.22%. That’s down from 9.41% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 23,396 Floridians have died from COVID-19.

In addition, 363 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.

Out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Florida ranks No. 23 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 Wednesday, there were 7,581 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 630, Palm Beach County had 436 and Miami-Dade had 1,084.

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 continue 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.