Florida adds another 8,530 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Miami-Dade hits single-day high.
The state of Florida reported 8,530 new confirmed COVID-19 cases Sunday, the third highest individual day (behind Saturday’s and Friday’s updates) and more than double any other Sunday update.
The previous high for a Sunday: 3,494, last Sunday, June 21. This Sunday is a 144% jump beyond that.
Just over one-fourth of the state’s new cases came from Miami-Dade, which shattered Friday’s single-day record with 2,152 new cases. Also, current hospitalizations in Miami-Dade have risen for 15 consecutive days.
In addition to the 8,530 new cases, the state added 29 deaths, 17 of which were in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties.
Since the novel coronavirus pandemic started, Florida has had 141,075 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 3,419 deaths.
Throughout the pandemic, the daily case report numbers on Sundays have tended to be lower than the five days previous because fewer people work in labs and enter data on the weekends. So, Sunday reflects Saturday’s decrease in processing tests and reporting results.
Monday tends to be a reflection of a similar decrease on Sunday, but also a normal amount of data entry happening early Monday.
South Florida counties
▪ Miami-Dade added 2,152 cases and six deaths, raising its state-high totals to 33,714 and 953 deaths. Friday’s update held the highest single-day rise in cases, 1,528. The median age for the new cases in that update was 38. It was 42 in Sunday’s update.
This continues a red flag trend — meaning the trends are going in the wrong direction — in two categories that Miami-Dade County’s New Normal Dashboard update tracks to indicate progress against the virus: downward
trajectory of cases over a 14-day period and average positive test rate over 14 days being under 10%.
The average positive test rate over the last 14 days is now up to 16.58%.
▪ Broward reported no more deaths but 574 more cases, putting those totals at 382 and 14,620, respectively. Broward’s seven-day positive rate average is 9.47%.
▪ Another 461 cases and 11 deaths in Palm Beach County means it has had 13,389 confirmed cases and 503 deaths during the pandemic. The county’s rolling seven-day positive test rate average is 10.6%.
▪ Monroe County added 15 cases, a single-day high, and is now at 219 cases. Monroe’s death toll remains at four.
Hospitalization
One of the tools that officials are relying on to determine if the coronavirus situation is improving in the state is hospitalization data. Unlike testing, which might be limited or take days to report results, hospitalizations can help give officials a real-time snapshot of how many people are severely ill with COVID-19.
The health department says it does not “have a figure” to reflect the number of people currently hospitalized and only provides the total number of hospitalizations in its statewide and county-level data. On Sunday, 108 hospitalizations during the pandemic were added, bringing the statewide total to 14,244.
In Miami-Dade, which is requiring its hospitals to self-report key metrics, reported current hospitalizations have risen 15 consecutive days and is at 1,082. More hospitals reporting boosted Friday’s jump to 89, but the last two days, the increases were 31 and 67.
Testing
There’s no question Florida has been testing more and reporting more than previously. After weeks of being below the University of South Florida College of Medicine dean’s recommendation that the state test about 33,000 people every day, Florida has been above that number across the last three weeks.
Sunday’s update showed 52,453 more people were tested, bringing that total to 1,883,244.
According to the state’s latest release, the average daily percentage of people who tested positive for the first time was 9.38 for June 14-20, up from 4.86% for June 7-13. The median day for June 14-20 was 9.96% (June 18) while the median day for June 7-13 was 4.95% (June 11).
The percentage of new positive tests around the state was 12.3%, the second consecutive day of a three-tenths reduction. That’s still the fourth highest daily percentage of the last two weeks behind Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The average positive test rate of the last seven days is 11.5%.
This story was originally published June 28, 2020 at 12:51 PM.
