State reports 5,093 new cases, 94 deaths

Florida reported 5,093 new coronavirus cases on Thursday and another 94 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,994,117 cases since the pandemic began.

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

South Florida

Palm Beach County: 382 additional cases and 8 more deaths. The county now has 127,111 confirmed cases and 2,642 deaths, including 48 non-residents.

Broward County: 712 additional cases and 3 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 206,185 cases and 2,617 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.

The death tally includes 45 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 1,108 additional cases and 11 new deaths. The county now has 430,942 confirmed cases and 5,751 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 5.56% on Thursday, down from 5.57% 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 108,785 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, up from 84,910 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 7,479 residents were reported Thursday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.04%. That’s down from 5.31% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 12,626 residents were reported Thursday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.77%. That’s up from 5.62% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 20,871 residents were reported Thursday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 9.18%.

That’s up from 5.86% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 32,598 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 621 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. 24 for deaths per 100K residents and No. 19 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 2,946 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 470, Palm Beach County had 178 and Miami-Dade had 584. 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, 1,967,600 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 9.16% of the population. So far, 2,496,435 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 11.62% of the population.