5,065 new cases, 93 deaths down from Saturday

Florida on Sunday reported slightly fewer new cases and deaths than the previous day.

Florida reported 5,065 new coronavirus cases on Sunday and another 93 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,868,772 cases since the pandemic began.

South Florida

South Florida reported 2,164 new cases and 26 deaths on Sunday.

Palm Beach County: 328 additional cases and 0 deaths. The county now has 117,559 confirmed cases and 2,437 deaths, including 43 non-residents.

Broward County: 708 additional cases and 16 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 189,833 cases and 2,380 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 40 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 1,128 additional cases and 10 new deaths. The county now has 402,265 confirmed cases and 5,326 deaths, including 36 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 6.32% on Sunday, up from 5.74% 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 78,853 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 124,466 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 5,405 residents were reported Sunday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.85%.

That’s up from 5.67% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 9,419 residents were reported Sunday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.44%. That’s up from 6.22% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 17,907 residents were reported Sunday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.32%. That’s up from 5.84% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 29,906 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 528 non-residents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Sunday 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. 25 for deaths per 100,000 residents and No. 23 for cases per 100,000 residents, according to the latest data from the health department and the COVID Tracking Project.

Hospitalizations

As of Sunday, there were 4,156 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 573, Palm Beach County had 322 and Miami-Dade had 690.

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.

Vaccines

In Florida, 1,314,176 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 6.12% of the population.

So far, 1,353,925 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 6.30% of the population.