Florida COVID update: 56,865 new cases added to toll, hospitalizations continue rising
Florida reported 56,865 COVID-19 cases and no new deaths Friday, according to Saturday’s report to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on Miami Herald calculations of CDC data.
New cases are down from Friday when 75,962 were reported, the largest single-day increase since the pandemic began.
The Florida Department of Health will most likely add deaths to Friday’s total. The state has done this in the past when it has added cases and deaths to previous days during the pandemic.
In all, Florida has recorded at least 4,222,827 confirmed COVID cases and 62,480 deaths.
In the past seven days, as the omicron version of the virus circulates, the state has added 19 deaths and 46,527 cases per day on average, according to Herald calculations of CDC data. That rolling seven-day case average is the highest it’s ever been.
FLORIDA COVID VACCINE RATES
The CDC won’t update vaccination data until Monday, but here is where the numbers stood as of Thursday: about 13,607,439 eligible Floridians — 63.4% of the state’s population — have completed the two-dose series of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines or have completed Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
COVID-19 Hospitalizations in Florida
There were 5,215 people hospitalized for COVID-19 in Florida, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Saturday report. This data is reported from 260 Florida hospitals. That’s 282 more than Friday’s report.
COVID-19 patients take up 9.20% of all inpatient beds in the latest report, compared to 8.69% among Thursday’s reporting hospitals.
Omicron, so far, is not as deadly as delta’s surge last summer. Hospitalizations are not approaching records set during delta’s wave from July through September.
At delta’s August peak, more than 15,000 patients were hospitalized in Florida, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
Of the people hospitalized in Florida, 555 were in intensive-care units, an increase of 10 from Friday’s report. That represents about 8.92% of the state’s ICU beds, compared to 8.74% the previous day.
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