Florida reports 5,610 new cases, 148 more deaths

Florida reported 5,610 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday and another 148 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,878,533 cases since the pandemic began.

The seven-day average for new cases has been declining since January 8.

South Florida reported 2,354 new cases on Tuesday.

Palm Beach County: 309 additional cases and 2 more deaths. The county now has 118,151 confirmed cases and 2,458 deaths, including 44 non-residents.

Broward County: 701 additional cases and 3 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 191,065 cases and 2,392 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 40 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 1,240 additional cases and 24 new deaths. The county now has 404,499 confirmed cases and 5,374 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 6.50% on Tuesday, down from 6.82% 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 86,140 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, up from 60,321 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 4,828 residents were reported Tuesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.48%. That’s down from 6.70% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 9,815 residents were reported Tuesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.28%. That’s down from 7.36% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 20,984 residents were reported Tuesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.01%. That’s down from 7.19% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 30,213 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 536 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. 24 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 4,198 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 580, Palm Beach County had 315 and Miami-Dade had 706.

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, 1,300,197 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 6.05% of the population.

So far, 1,398,394 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 6.51% of the population.