Florida adds 5,570 COVID-19 cases a day after duplicate tests led state to hold report
UPDATE 10/12/2020: On Monday, the Florida Department of Health released a statement saying that Helix Laboratory was not at fault, like the department originally said, for the thousands of duplicated test results. The health department now says it was a technical issue that caused the data’s repeated duplication. Click here to learn more.
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Florida’s Department of Health on Sunday confirmed 5,570 additional cases of COVID-19, the most reported since August. It comes a day after Florida did not report any new cases or deaths because officials were left combing through 400,000 test results a private lab resent Friday night, clogging the system.
The state now has 734,491 confirmed cases. Also, 178 resident deaths were announced, bringing the resident death toll to 15,364. Two new non-resident deaths were also announced, bringing the non-resident toll to 188.
Throughout the pandemic, the newly confirmed cases reported on Sundays have tended to be lower than the other days of the week because fewer people work in labs and enter data on the weekends.
However, this Sunday’s single-day count also includes Saturday’s numbers because the state had to put a hold on its daily COVID-19 update while officials worked to eliminate hundreds of thousands of duplicated test results that were resent Friday by Helix Laboratory, a private lab.
The 178 resident deaths announced also does not necessarily mean that every person died in the past 24 hours. In Florida, the deaths announced on a given day could be from several days or weeks earlier.
Florida’s Department of Health said the data dump caused Friday and Saturday’s state’s positivity rate of new cases (people who tested positive for the first time) to be inaccurate.
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.
Epidemiologists then use the testing data to create a positivity rate. The rate helps them determine if a rise in cases is because of an increase in testing or if it means there’s increased transmission of the virus in the community.
On Sunday, Florida’s Department of Health reported the results of 114,674 people tested on Saturday.
The data dump brought Friday and Saturday’s percent positivity to 7.88% and 3.47% but “the most accurate way to interpret percent positivity for these 2 days is as a 2-day average, which was 4.24%” according to the health department.
Here’s what else you need to know:
Confirmed COVID-19 cases in South Florida
Note: The Florida Department of Health says that each county’s percent positivity for new cases (people who tested positive for the first time) does not include retests (people who have tested positive once and are being tested for a second time.)
▪ Miami-Dade County reported 1,006 additional confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 30 new deaths, according to Florida’s Department of Health. The county now has 175,118 confirmed cases and 3,439 deaths.
The data dump caused Friday and Saturday’s percent positivity to hit 7.83% and 4.48% but “the most accurate way to interpret percent positivity for these 2 days is as a 2-day average, which was 5.11%” according to the health department.
The 14-day positivity average would then be 4.77%, according to Miami-Dade County’s “New Normal” dashboard.
▪ Broward County reported 537 additional confirmed cases of the disease and 12 new deaths. The county has a known total of 79,332 cases and 1,467 deaths.
The data dump caused Friday and Saturday’s percent positivity to hit 8.83% and 2.32% but “the most accurate way to interpret percent positivity for these 2 days is as a 2-day average, which was 3.17%” according to the health department.
▪ Palm Beach County saw 307 additional confirmed cases and 21 new deaths. The county now has 47,955 confirmed cases and 1,446 deaths.
The data dump caused Friday and Saturday’s percent positivity to hit 4.37% and 3.66% but “the most accurate way to interpret percent positivity for these 2 days is as a 2-day average, which was 3.82%” according to the health department.
▪ Monroe County confirmed 31 additional cases and no new deaths. The county has a known total of 1,958 cases and 24 deaths.
The data dump caused Friday and Saturday’s percent positivity to hit 29.82% and 4.49% but “the most accurate way to interpret percent positivity for these 2 days is as a 2-day average, which was 8.40%” according to the health department.
COVID-19 hospitalizations in Florida
One of the tools that officials rely on to determine whether 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 Florida Agency for Health Care Administration reports the number of patients hospitalized statewide with a “primary diagnosis of COVID.” The data, which is updated at least every hour, does not distinguish between the number of COVID-19 patients in hospital intensive care units and those in acute-care beds, which require less attention from nurses.
Previously, the state was providing only the total number of hospitalizations in its statewide and county-level data. Miami-Dade was an exception, with hospitals self-reporting a number of key metrics, including hospitalizations, to the county, which has made this data public for several months.
As of 12:30 p.m. Sunday, there were 2,122 COVID-19 patients admitted into hospitals throughout the state, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration dashboard. This is a significant decrease from early August, when more than 5,000 COVID-19 patients were admitted into hospitals throughout the state.
Of Sunday’s hospitalizations, 256 were in Miami-Dade, 174 in Broward, 117 in Palm Beach and three in Monroe counties, according to the agency.
Florida’s current hospitalization data does not always match the hospitalization data reported in Miami-Dade’s “New Normal” dashboard. Officials say this could be for a number of reasons, including the frequency of daily updates.
On Sunday, Miami-Dade hospitalizations for COVID-19 complications had a slight increase from 323 to 326, according to Miami-Dade County’s “New Normal” dashboard. According to Sunday’s data, 32 people were discharged and 26 people were admitted.
The state has had a total of 45,924 Florida residents hospitalized for COVID-19-related complications, according to Florida’s COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard.
This story was originally published October 11, 2020 at 11:24 AM with the headline "Florida adds 5,570 COVID-19 cases a day after duplicate tests led state to hold report."
