State reports 1,700 cases, steep decline since summer

As vaccination continues in Florida, the state reported a steep decline in new COVID-19 cases Monday.

Florida reported 1,700 new coronavirus cases on Monday and another 147 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,910,921 cases since the pandemic began.

The seven-day average for new cases has been declining since Jan. 8 when it hit 17,991 new cases in a single day. Monday tends to be a day that fewer new cases are reported. However, the first day of March seems to have brought the lowest number of new cases since before the summer peak.

The new cases reflect the results of only 33,559 tests compared with more than 100,000 tests each day throughout most of February.

South Florida

South Florida reported only 593 new cases on Tuesday.

Palm Beach County: 133 additional cases and 23 more deaths. The county now has 120,868 confirmed cases and 2,525 deaths, including 45 non-residents.

Broward County: 225 additional cases and 9 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 195,217 cases and 2,440 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 41 non-residents.

Miami-Dade County: 235 additional cases and 20 new deaths. The county now has 410,952 confirmed cases and 5,486 deaths, including 37 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 6.32% on Monday, down from 6.40% 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 28,767 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 84,738 results reported the day before.

The positivity rate in South Florida is hovering around 6%.

Palm Beach County: Test results for 2,041 residents were reported Monday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.96%. That’s up from 6.04% the previous day.

Broward County: Test results for 3,874 residents were reported Monday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.22%. That’s down from 6.73% the previous day.

Miami-Dade County: Test results for 5,907 residents were reported Monday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.74%. That’s down from 7.97% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 30,999 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 557 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. 24 for deaths per 100K residents and No. 21 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 3,673 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 537, Palm Beach County had 255 and Miami-Dade had 613.

Hospitalizations hit a peak in late July of about 9,500 patients statewide, then dipped as low as 2,011 on Oct. 19. The number of hospitalizations for COVID19 increased in January but declined throughout February.

Vaccines

In Florida, 1,337,431 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 6.23% of the population.

So far, 1,680,230 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 7.82% of the population.