Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Florida reports 7,128 new COVID-19 cases, 127 deaths
Florida reported 7,128 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday and another 127 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,885,661 cases since the pandemic began.
The seven-day average for new cases has been declining since Jan. 8.
South Florida
South Florida reported 2,354 new cases on Tuesday.
Palm Beach County: 702 additional cases and 14 more deaths. The county now has 118,853 confirmed cases and 2,473 deaths, including 45 non-residents.
Broward County: 903 additional cases and 9 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 191,968 cases and 2,401 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 40 non-residents.
Miami-Dade County: 1,064 additional cases and 15 new deaths. The county now has 405,563 confirmed cases and 5,389 deaths, including 36 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 5.99% on Wednesday, down from 6.50% 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 118,244 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, up from 86,140 results reported the day before.
Palm Beach County: Test results for 9,878 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.02%. That’s up from 6.48% the previous day.
Broward County: Test results for 13,255 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.80%. That’s down from 7.28% the previous day.
Miami-Dade County: Test results for 20,010 residents were reported Wednesday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.61%. That’s down from 6.01% the previous day.
Deaths
The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 30,340 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 538 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. 24 for deaths per 100K residents and No. 23 for cases per 100K residents, according to the latest
data from the health department and the COVID Tracking Project.
Hospitalizations
As of Wednesday, there were 4,077 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 596, Palm Beach County had 321 and Miami-Dade had 665.
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, 1,308,102 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 6.09% of the population.
So far, 1,440,393 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 6.71% of the population.