Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Florida reports 4,791 new cases, as total for pandemic nears 2M
Florida reported 4,791 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday and another 101 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19.
The state has now reported 1,984,425 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: 293 additional cases and 7 more deaths. The county now has 126,355 confirmed cases and 2,622 deaths, including 46 non-residents.
Broward County: 623 additional cases and 9 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 204,870 cases and 2,601 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 43 non-residents.
Miami-Dade County: 1,273 additional cases and 19 new deaths. The county now has 428,873 confirmed cases and 5,729 deaths, including 41 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 5.95% on Tuesday, down from 6.13% 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 81,222 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, up from 46,871 results reported the day before.
Palm Beach County: Test results for 4,634 residents were reported Tuesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.37%.
That’s down from 6.67% the previous day.
Broward County: Test results for 9,847 residents were reported Tuesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.39%. That’s down from 7.09% the previous day.
Miami-Dade County: Test results for 22,082 residents were reported Tuesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.92%. That’s up from 5.87% the previous day.
Deaths
The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 32,449 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 612 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. 20 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 3,052 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 461, Palm Beach County had 198 and Miami-Dade had 608.
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, 1,882,052 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 8.76% of the population.
So far, 2,370,198 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 11.04% of the population.