Another 9,300 confirmed COVID cases as Florida passes N.Y. for second highest total in U.S.
Florida has another 9,344 confirmed COVID-19 cases, according to data released Sunday by the state, pushing it past New York for the second most cases in the nation.
During the pandemic, Florida has had 423,855 COVID-19 cases, second only to the 445,400 reported by California as of Saturday. New York was reporting 415,911, according to the New York Times as of Sunday afternoon.
About half of Sunday’s new cases in Florida came from South Florida. Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties accounted for 4,694 (50.2%) of the new cases and 37 (47.4%) of the new deaths.
Florida has had 5,972 deaths from COVID-19.
Sunday’s update reported fewer cases and deaths than the previous few days, a norm broken by July 12 and July 19. The number of daily cases released on Sundays tend to be lower because fewer people work in labs and enter data on weekends.
HOW MANY CONFIRMED COVID-19 CASES ARE IN SOUTH FLORIDA?
▪ Miami-Dade County reported 2,901 new cases and nine deaths, putting its pandemic totals at 104,755 and 1,388, respectively. As of Saturday’s Miami-Dade County New Normal Dashboard update, the county was in the red flag zone on trajectory of daily case counts over a 14-day period and 14 consecutive days where the positive test rate is under 10%. As for the latter, it’s been weeks since there was even one day under 10%.
The average daily positive rate last week was 19.7%. For this week, it was 19.2%. The two-week positive-to-case average is 19.5%.
▪ Broward saw 1,163 new cases and 25 deaths. Its pandemic totals are 49,350 and 605, respectively. According to the daily county-by-county report, The average daily positive test rate edged down from 14.5% to 14.3%.
▪ Palm Beach County reported a rise of 618 cases and 3 deaths. Palm Beach has the third most cases in Florida, 30,325, and the second most deaths, 755. As in Broward, the average daily positive test rate for the week shuffled downward from last week to this week, 11.6% to 11.1%.
▪ Monroe County saw 12 new cases, and now totals 1,126 COVID-19 cases and six deaths.
Current hospitalizations
By the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration, current “hospitalizations from a primary diagnosis of COVID-19” dropped from 8,974 to 8,942. That’s a decrease of only 0.35 %, but a decrease, nonetheless.
That report, which updated Sunday morning, said Miami-Dade’s part of that state total was 1,883, an increase of nine. Broward decreased 21 to 1,274. Palm Beach went down eight to 587. And Monroe rose two to 17.
Sunday’s Miami-Dade hospitalization chart says reporting errors resulted in 73 cases not being reported in Saturday’s update. Even with that, Sunday represented the second consecutive day of decreased hospitalizations by Miami-Dade’’s chart, from Friday’s 2,257 to Saturday’s 2,207 to Sunday’s 2,188.
Jennifer Moon, deputy mayor of Miami-Dade, previously told the Miami Herald that there may be a number of reasons why the county’s hospitalization data differs from the state’s: 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
With another 50,204 people, a total of 3,391,133 people have been tested in Florida. Of those people, 12.5% have tested positive, a statistic that has risen steadily for weeks. The state’s average positive daily test rate, however, edged down from 12.76% to 12.43%.
This story was originally published July 26, 2020 at 11:35 AM.
