MIAMI — Florida’s Department of Health on Saturday confirmed 15,019 additional cases of COVID-19, bringing the state’s known total to 1,713,589. Also, 106 resident deaths were announced, moving the resident death toll to 26,360.
The state added the most cases since Jan. 15 when 16,875 were reported.
Four new nonresident deaths were also announced, bringing the cumulative non-resident toll to 435. The state’s total death toll is 26,795.
The Sunshine State has the third-highest case total after California and Texas and the fourth-highest death toll in the country, after New York, California and Texas, according to the New York Times database of U.S. cases.
After the positivity percentages doubled statewide from Wednesday to Thursday, positivity rates dropped from over 14% to single digit numbers in Saturday’s report. The number of tests statewide also jumped from 75,179 on Thursday to 222,516 on Friday.
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 takes 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.
As of 8:30 a.m. Saturday, there were 6,353 COVID-19 patients admitted into hospitals throughout the state, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration dashboard. This is near mid-August levels, when more than 7,000 COVID-19 patients were admitted daily into hospitals throughout the state.
Of Saturday’s hospitalizations, 948 were in Miami-Dade, 657 in Broward, 416 in Palm Beach and six in Monroe, according to the agency.
The state has had a total of 71,535 Florida residents hospitalized for COVID-19-related complications, according to Florida’s COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard.
COVID-19 testing in Florida has seen steady growth since the crisis began.
Testing, like hospitalizations, helps officials determine the virus’s progress and plays a role in deciding whether it is safe to lift stay-at-home orders and loosen restrictions.
Epidemiologists 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 whether there’s increased transmission of the virus in the community.
On Saturday, Florida’s Department of Health reported the results of 222,516 people tested on Friday. The positivity rate of new cases (people who tested positive for the first time) decreased from 14.46% to 6.62%.
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