State reports 1,234 new COVID-19 cases and 55 more deaths

Hospitalizations

New COVID-19 cases in Florida are declining as summer approaches.

Florida reported 1,234 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday and another 55 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 2,327,989 cases since the pandemic began.

The seven-day average for new cases reached as high as 17,991 on Jan. 8. On Wednesday, the seven-day average was 1,692 new cases.

South Florida

South Florida counties reported 332 new cases Wednesday, a significant decline from only a week ago when the counties reported 657 new cases.

Palm Beach County: There were 57 additional cases and zero new deaths in the county. The county now has 148,713 confirmed cases and 2,936 deaths, including 55 non-residents.

Broward County: The county had 59 additional cases and two more deaths. Broward has a known total of 245,095 cases and 3,132 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 53 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 216 additional cases and 17 new deaths. The county now has 501,639 confirmed cases and 6,506 deaths, including 49 non-residents.

Testing and positivity

Public health experts say the virus is considered under control when the COVID19 test positivity rate is under 5%. Florida often has exceeded 5% in its widely publicized calculation for assessing the rate for testing of residents.

The state reported a daily positivity rate of 3.33% on Wednesday, down from 3.89% 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 newly reported case numbers reflect the results of 37,834 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, up from 32,251 results reported the day before.

The positivity rate in all three South Florida counties now is below 3%.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 2,814 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 1.99%. That’s down from 3.90% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 3,582 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 1.56%. That’s down from 2.13% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 7,961 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 2.85%. That’s up from 2.62% the previous day.

Deaths

The numbers of daily deaths reported from COVID-19 have declined to fewer than 100 during recent weeks. On Wednesday, the state reported 55 additional deaths.

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 36,924 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 741 non-residents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Wednesday 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.

As of Wednesday, there were 1,836 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 224, Palm Beach County had 105 and Miami-Dade had 291.

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

Vaccines

More than 10.36 million Floridians have had one or more doses of a COVID vaccine as of Wednesday. Since becoming eligible in May, more than 89,000 12- to 14-year-olds have received a shot.

In Florida, 2,021,427 people have received their first dose of the vaccine only, or about 9.41% of the population.

So far, 8,322,901 people have completed the series of doses required to be fully vaccinated. That represents about 38.75% of the population.