Florida nears 2M COVID-19 infections, although fewer new cases are reported

Florida reported 5,140 new coronavirus cases on Friday and another 53 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,999,257 cases since the pandemic began.

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

South Florida

Palm Beach County: 380 additional cases and 1 more deaths. The county now has 127,491 confirmed cases and 2,643 deaths, including 48 non-residents.

Broward County: 704 additional cases and 8 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 206,889 cases and 2,625 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 45 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 1,235 additional cases and 6 new deaths. The county now has 432,177 confirmed cases and 5,757 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 5.02% on Friday, down from 5.56% 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 101,591 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 108,785 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 7,795 residents were reported Friday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 4.82%. That’s down from 5.04% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 12,943 residents were reported Friday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.49%. That’s down from 5.77% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 20,754 residents were reported Friday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.84%. That’s down from 9.18% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 32,651 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 622 nonresidents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Friday 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 Friday, there were 2,937 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 478, Palm Beach County had 171 and Miami-Dade had 577.

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, 2,016,673 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 9.39% of the population. So far, 2,553,865 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 11.89% of the population.