Miami-Dade coronavirus deaths hit 1,000 as Florida adds more than 6,500 new cases
Florida’s Department of Health on Wednesday announced 6,563 additional cases of COVID-19 and 45 new deaths as the state moves into its fifth month of the pandemic.
Florida now has a total of 158,997 confirmed cases and 3,550 deaths. Nine of the new deaths were in Miami-Dade County, bringing the county’s death toll to 1,000.
On Wednesday, Florida’s COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard was updated to also include a total for non-resident deaths in the state. One additional death was added, bringing the statewide non-resident death total to 100.
Wednesday’s single-day total of newly confirmed cases is higher than Tuesday’s, replacing it as the fourth highest total reported in the state since the pandemic began in March. The highest single-day total was reported on Saturday with 9,585 cases.
Confirmed COVID-19 cases in South Florida
Less than half of the new cases and new deaths were in South Florida.
▪ Miami-Dade County reported 1,141 additional confirmed cases of COVID-19 and nine new deaths. The county now has 37,961 confirmed cases and 1,000 deaths, the highest in the state.
▪ Broward County reported 531 additional confirmed cases of the disease and two new deaths. The county now has 16,155 known cases and 385 deaths.
▪ Palm Beach County saw 297 additional confirmed cases and two new deaths. The county now has 14,447 and 512 deaths.
▪ Monroe County reported 11 additional cases of the disease and no new deaths. The Florida Keys now have 270 confirmed cases and four deaths.
Here’s a breakdown on what you need to know:
Confirmed COVID-19 cases in Florida
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.
Florida’s COVID-19 Data and Surveillance dashboard does not reflect the number of people currently hospitalized and only provides the total number of hospitalizations in its statewide and county-level data. That is expected to change sometime this week.
On Tuesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis office confirmed to the Miami Herald that the state would start reporting current hospitalization numbers for all counties sometime this week.
The change comes following a surge of cases in recent weeks with public health experts and the nonprofit COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer group that has become the most prolific coronavirus data collector in the country, pressuring the state to start reporting current hospitalizations, saying the information is a clearer way of assessing how bad the pandemic is getting.
On Wednesday, the state was still only providing total hospitalization counts — 245 hospitalizations were added, bringing the statewide total to 14,825.
Hospitals in Miami-Dade have been self-reporting a number of key metrics, including hospitalizations, to the county, which has made this data public for several months. Some provide updates every day; others don’t.
On Wednesday, Miami-Dade hospitalizations for COVID-19 complications hit its third day of all-time highs with a total of 1,298 patients, according to Miami-Dade County’s “New Normal” dashboard data. According to Wednesday’s data, 158 people were discharged and 169 people were admitted.
On Tuesday, hospitals reported a total of 1,202 patients, 116 people were discharged and 124 people were admitted.
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Scientists are also still working to learn more about the virus, including how many people in the community are infected and have mild or no symptoms, which can make it difficult to determine what percentage of the cases hospitalizations represent.
COVID-19 testing in Florida
Testing in Florida has seen steady growth since the COVID-19 crisis began.
Testing, like hospitalizations, helps officials determine the virus’ progress and plays a role in deciding whether it is safe to lift stay-at-home orders and loosen restrictions.
The recommended number of daily tests needed varies among experts, but the dean of the University of South Florida’s College of Medicine told the governor that Florida needs to test about 33,000 people every day.
On Wednesday, Florida’s Department of Health reported 45,366 new tests on Tuesday. The positive rate was 16.58% of the total, according to the report. In total, 2,380,131 tests have been conducted.
To date, 1,981,915 people have been tested in Florida. Of the total tested, 158,997 (about 8.02%) have tested positive. The state says there are 2,094 tests with pending results. Wednesday’s testing data was not immediately available.
Miami Herald staff writers Daniel Chang and Ben Conarck contributed to this report.
This story was originally published July 1, 2020 at 11:08 AM.
