10,577 new cases and 71 more deaths

Florida reported 10,577 new coronavirus cases on Saturday and another 71 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,116,973 cases since the pandemic began.

South Florida

Palm Beach County: 556 additional cases and no additional deaths. The county now has 72,247 confirmed cases and 1,793 deaths, including 27 non-residents.

Broward County: 917 additional cases and 2 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 119,429 cases and 1,760 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 30 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County:

2,059 additional cases and 6 new deaths. The county now has 255,462 confirmed cases and 3,988 deaths, including 23 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 7.89% on Saturday, up from 7.88% 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 132,615 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 144,884 results reported the day before.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 8,711 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.31%. That’s down from 7.85% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 13,588 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.86%. That’s up from 6.37% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 25,077 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 8.17%. That’s up from 7.91% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 19,785 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 264 non-residents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Saturday happened over several weeks but were just confirmed in the past day.

Hospitalizations

As of Saturday, there were 4,624 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 430, Palm Beach County had 277 and Miami-Dade had 812.

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.