Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition

Florida reports 7,179 new cases, 136 deaths

- By David Fleshler David Fleshler can be reached at dfleshler@sun-sentinel.com and 954-356-4535.

Florida reported 7,179 new coronaviru­s cases on Tuesday and another 136 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,918,100 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: 358 additional cases and 6 more deaths. The county now has 121,226 confirmed cases and 2,531 deaths, including 45 non-residents.

Broward County: 897 additional cases and 9 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 196,114 cases and 2,449 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 41 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 1,956 additional cases and 32 new deaths. The county now has 412,908 confirmed cases and 5,519 deaths, including 38 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 5.69% on Tuesday, down from 6.32% 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 124,421 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, up from 28,767 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 6,428 residents were reported Tuesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.41%. That’s down from 6.96% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 14,701 residents were reported Tuesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.10%. That’s down from 6.22% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 39,644 residents were reported Tuesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 4.87%. That’s down from 5.74% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 31,135 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 561 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. 21 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 3,673 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 546, Palm Beach County had 254 and Miami-Dade had 590.

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, 1,343,423 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 6.25% of the population. So far, 1,691,213 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 7.87% of the population.

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