Florida hospitals continue to report fewer COVID hospitalizations and ICU patients
In a continuing downward swing, 11,701 people are hospitalized for COVID-19 in Florida, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services report on Sunday from 259 Florida hospitals.
That’s 521 fewer patients than Saturday’s report from 260 hospitals, and 950 fewer patients than Friday’s from 261 hospitals.
In Sunday’s report, COVID-19 patients take up 20.06% of all inpatient hospital beds compared to 20.75% in the previous day’s reporting hospitals.
Of the people hospitalized in Florida, 2,828 people were in intensive care unit beds, a decrease of 57 for the second consecutive day. That represents 43.22% of the ICU hospital beds at the 259 hospitals reporting data, compared to 43.58% the previous day.
What’s not clear is if these continued decreases are because this COVID-19 wave is ebbing or because some of the people in the recent hospitalization spike are now part of the death toll reported over the last two weeks.
During the latest wave of the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasn’t been reporting case or death counts on Sunday. Lately, death counts have been reported for Florida in clumps on Mondays and Thursdays.
Sunday’s Miami-Dade report says hospitals had 921 COVID-19 patients on Saturday, 20 fewer than the previous day’s report. There were 76 patients discharged and 68 new COVID patients, the fewest new patients in weeks. Of the 68 new patients, 57 of them (83.8%) aren’t fully vaccinated.
Intensive care unit patients also dipped a blink, down two to 263.
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREThe Herald publishes the number of new COVID-19 cases and deaths reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after each update by the agency.
On Aug. 10, the Florida Department of Health changed the way it reported new cases and deaths to the CDC. Cases and deaths used to be logged as total new cases reported on a single day. Now, Florida is reporting cases by the “case date,” according to the CDC, rather than the date the case was logged into the system. The result of this change is a lag in cases by date and a number of cases back-filling over time.
The Herald will continue to report the difference in total cases and deaths from one day to the next in stories about daily new cases and deaths, as this is consistent with the way data have been presented in daily stories since the beginning of the pandemic.
More information
The Herald is calculating new cases using the difference between cumulative total of cases and the total from the previous day, as pulled daily from the CDC trends data. New deaths are calculated the same way.
As a result, the “new cases” and “new deaths” listed on the CDC site for any given day may be different than numbers published by the Herald for the same day.
According to a statement from CDC spokesperson Jasmine Reed on Aug. 18: “Florida’s aggregate case and death data includes case date for cases and date of death for deaths. The method applies data shared by Florida and to data displayed on COVID Data Tracker. Other States also use this reporting method and states can vary in the reporting method. For example, data as of the date that states submit may be the date that a state received its data from its reporting entities, or it might be another dating method that the state prefers.”
DOH spokesperson Weesam Khoury said Florida’s new reporting system “will ensure that continuous epidemiological analyses provide the most updated data to the public.” Neither agency provided further explanation of how a “case date” is assigned to each new case.
FLORIDA VACCINATIONS
About 11,809,414 eligible Floridians — 55% of the state’s population — have completed the two-dose series of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, or have completed Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine, according to the CDC.
VACCINATIONS IN SOUTH FLORIDA AND MANATEE COUNTY
The CDC reports that every county’s level of community transmission is high. Here’s how many people have been fully vaccinated in South Florida, according to the CDC.
▪ In Miami-Dade County about 1,887,315 people, or 69.5% of the county’s total population, are fully vaccinated.
▪ In Broward County about 1,142,368 people are fully vaccinated, or 58.5% of the county’s population.
▪ In Palm Beach County, about 836,408 people are fully vaccinated, or 55.9% of the county’s population.
▪ In Monroe County about 48,192 people are fully vaccinated, or 64.9% of the county’s population.
▪ In Manatee County about 206,359 people are fully vaccinated, or 51.2% of the county’s population.
This story was originally published September 12, 2021 at 1:30 PM.
