Latest COVID-1 9 cases, deaths.

Florida reported 6,640 new coronavirus cases on Thursday and another 138 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,892,301 cases since the pandemic began.

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

South Florida

South Florida reported 2,354 new cases on Tuesday.

Palm Beach County: 520 additional cases and 15 more deaths. The county now has 119,373 confirmed cases and 2,488 deaths, including 45 non-residents.

Broward County: 770 additional cases and 4 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 192,738 cases and 2,405 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.

The death tally includes 40 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 1,424 additional cases and 16 new deaths. The county now has 406,987 confirmed cases and 5,405 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 5.23% on Thursday, down from 5.99% 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 125,822 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, up from 118,244 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 9,242 residents were reported Thursday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.51%. That’s down from 7.02% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 13,290 residents were reported Thursday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.84%. That’s down from 6.80% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 25,071 residents were reported Thursday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.70%. That’s up from 5.61% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 30,478 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 540 non-residents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Thursday 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 100K residents and No. 22 for cases per 100K residents, according to the latest data from the health department and the COVID Tracking Project.

Hospitalizations

As of Thursday, there were 3,956 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 589, Palm Beach County had 310 and Miami-Dade had 622.

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, 1,299,609 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 6.05% of the population.

So far, 1,492,509 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 6.95% of the population.