Florida reports lowest COVID-19 case count in six months

Florida posted the lowest number of new COVID cases in six months Monday, although that appears to be the result of a sharp drop in the number of people tested.

Florida reported 1,613 new coronavirus cases on Monday and another 35 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 2,125,846 cases since the pandemic began.

South Florida

Palm Beach County: 98 additional cases and 10 more deaths. The county now has 136,206 confirmed cases and 2,752 deaths, including 52 non-residents.

Broward County: 204 additional cases and 1 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 223,356 cases and 2,767 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 46 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 388 additional cases. The state reduced the county’s total death toll by one, having previously said the information is provisional and subject to adjustment. The county now has 461,041 confirmed cases and 6,023 deaths, including 43 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 8.00% on Monday, up from 7.65% 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 20,705 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 72,620 results reported the day before.

The positivity rate has been rising in South Florida counties, particularly in Broward County.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 1,403 residents were reported Monday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.99%. That’s up from 6.36% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 2,942 residents were reported Monday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.48%. That’s up from 6.98% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 4,456 residents were reported Monday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 9.00%. That’s up from 7.19% the previous day.

Deaths

The numbers of hospitalized COVID patients and deaths in South Florida have declined.

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 34,056 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 664 non-residents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Monday 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. 23 for deaths per 100K residents and No. 16 for cases per 100K residents, according to the latest data from the health department and the COVID Tracking Project.

Hospitalizations

As of Monday, there were 3,186 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 445, Palm Beach County had 210 and Miami-Dade had 581.

Hospitalizations hit a peak in late July of about 9,500 patients statewide.

Vaccines

More than 5.67 million people in Florida have received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine.

In Florida, 2,843,455 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 13.24% of the population.

So far, 4,447,965 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 20.71% of the population.