Almost 12,500 COVID-19 cases added in Florida. The state’s death toll is over 5,000
Sunday, Florida’s daily COVID-19 case count remained high and death toll remained raised, but the positive test rate did fall over the last week.
The state’s COVID-19 dashboard reported 12,478 new cases Sunday, the second-highest total for a Sunday but far below last week’s 15,300.
Also reported: 89 deaths, bringing its total death toll during the novel coronavirus pandemic to 5,091 (4,982 residents and 109 non-residents). Miami-Dade accounted for almost one-third of those deaths, reporting 28 along with 3,212 cases.
According to the state’s county-by-county breakdown, which uses data input at slightly different times of day than the dashboard, the average daily positive test rate for July 5 through July 11 was 14.4. From July 12 through Saturday, that rate dropped to 12.72%, an improvement of 1.68 percentage points or 11.67% but still above a 10% positive test rate.
Last week, the state had 69,700 new cases. This week’s 80,236 new cases pushes the state past the 350,000 cases for the pandemic, a case count now at 350,047.
South Florida counties
▪ Miami-Dade’s 3,212 new cases and 28 deaths put its pandemic totals at 84,238 and 1,302, respectively.
As of Sunday’s Miami-Dade County New Normal Dashboard update, the county was in the red flag zone in two categories: trajectory of daily case counts over a 14-day period and 30% of Intensive Care Unit bed capacity available. They’re edging toward the red flag zone on 30% of total beds available (33.29%).
Original ICU bed capacity has been exceeded by 27.39%, but the chart notes that hospital bed numbers don’t “include the 1,270 acute care and ICU beds that may be converted.”
After weeks of daily positive test rates well above 10%, the New Normal update doesn’t even bother measuring how close the county is to having 14 consecutive days of less than 10%. Under that category, it just lists the “positive test results for the cases reported today” from the county (25.5% as of Sunday’s update), the state and Jackson Health System.
By the state’s county-by-county daily report, Miami-Dade’s average daily positive test rate was 19.6% the last seven reported days, down from 21.1% of the previous seven reported days.
▪ Broward saw 1,150 new cases. With another five deaths, its pandemic totals are 39,281 and 493, respectively. The average daily positive test rate fell from 15.7% the previous week to 14.5% this week.
▪ Palm Beach County’s totals rose by 740 cases and 13 deaths. Palm Beach has the third most cases in Florida, 25,785, and the second most deaths, 679. As in Broward, the average daily positive test rate for the week dropped from last week to this week, 13.3% to 11.5%.
▪ Monroe County: With another 49 new cases reported Saturday, there have been 859 COVID-19 cases and six deaths.
Current Hospitalitzations
Since the state began releasing a count of people currently in hospitals “with a primary diagnosis of COVID-19,” that number also has risen steadily. Sunday morning’s update put the state total at 9,203, a rise of 47 from Saturday morning.
In South Florida, Broward County went down one person to 1,220 and Monroe County remained the same at 15. Miami-Dade went up 26 to 1,996 and Palm Beach went up five to 596.
Miami-Dade’s been reporting its own daily current hospitalization count for over a month. In the last 33 days, that number has risen 31 times and is now at 2,244.
Jennifer Moon, deputy mayor of Miami-Dade told the Miami Herald last week that there may be a number of reasons why the county’s hospitalization data differs from the state’s.
She said these reasons include the frequency of daily updates, human error and whether the state’s agency is including in its data the patients who visited the emergency room for other urgent medical needs and tested positive for COVID after they are admitted.
Testing
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.
Florida reported another 70,770 people had been tested in the state, raising the total to 3,006,290.
The state began adding antigen test results to Florida’s case totals earlier this month. Antigen tests are a new category of tests that detect fragments of proteins found in the virus by testing samples collected by nose swabs. The FDA authorized the first antigen COVID-19 tests in May.
Antigen tests are not the same as antibody tests.
This story was originally published July 19, 2020 at 12:07 PM with the headline "Almost 12,500 COVID-19 cases added in Florida. The state’s death toll is over 5,000."
