MIAMI _ Florida's Department of Health on Thursday confirmed 6,236 additional cases of COVID-19, pushing the state's known total to 557,137. An additional 148 Florida resident deaths were also announced, bring the statewide resident death toll to 8,913.
The health department later updated its nonresident death toll with one additional death, bringing the count up to 134.
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 only providing 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 1:31 p.m. Eastern time Thursday, there were 6,325 COVID-19 patients admitted into hospitals throughout the state, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration dashboard.
Of those, 1,292 were in Miami-Dade, 867 in Broward, 387 in Palm Beach and eight 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 Thursday, Miami-Dade hospitalizations for COVID-19 complications decreased from 1,568 to 1,498, according to Miami-Dade County's "New Normal" dashboard. According to Thursday's data, 154 people were discharged and 98 people were admitted.
The state has had a total of 32,537 Florida residents hospitalized for COVID-19-related complications, according to Florida's COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard.
Testing in Florida has seen steady growth since the COVID-19 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 then use the testing data to create a positive 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 Thursday, Florida's Department of Health reported the results of 78,247 people tested on Wednesday. The positive rate of new cases (people who tested positive for the first time) was 9.52%.
If retests are included _ people who have tested positive once and are being tested for a second time _ the positive rate for Tuesday's testing was 13.86% of the total, according to the report.
In total, 5,497,351 tests have been conducted. To date, 4,128,584 people have been tested in Florida. Of the total tested, 557,137 (13.49%) have tested positive. The state says there are 3,618 tests with pending results.
