MIAMI _ Florida's Department of Health confirmed 509 additional cases of COVID-19 statewide as beaches, hotels and gyms reopened in Broward County on Tuesday morning. The state now has a total of 52,255 confirmed cases.
There were also seven new deaths announced, raising the statewide death toll to 2,259.
Tuesday's daily total of newly confirmed cases is the lowest the state has seen since May 19, when it reported 502 new cases.
More than half the state's known COVID-19 cases are in South Florida's four counties: Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe. Miami-Dade continues to lead the state with the most confirmed cases and deaths. It has 17,168 known cases and 633 deaths.
Despite the daily reports of new cases and deaths, local and state officials have previously said that decreases in the daily total of reported cases are signs that social-distancing measures are working.
Officials are also relying on hospitalization data. Unlike testing, which might be limited or take days to report results, hospitalizations can help give officials a real-time visual of how many people are severely ill with COVID-19.
The health department says it doesn't "have a figure" to reflect the number of people currently hospitalized and only provides the total number of hospitalizations in its statewide and county-level data.
On Friday morning, 58 hospitalizations were added, raising the statewide total count to 9,482. Hospitals in Miami-Dade are self-reporting a number of key metrics, including hospitalizations, to the county. Some provide updates every day; others don't.
As of Monday, Miami-Dade says it has a total of 628 people hospitalized for COVID-19 related complications.
Scientists are also still working to learn more about the virus, including how many people in the community are actually infected with the disease and have mild or no symptoms, which can make it difficult to determine what percentage of the cases hospitalizations represent.
Testing in Florida has seen a steady growth since the COVID-19 crisis began and has started to see a steady decline in the percentage of people testing positive.
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.
The recommended numbers of daily tests needed vary by experts, but the dean of the University of South Florida's College of Medicine told the governor Florida needs to test about 33,000 people every day.
Florida's Department of Health reported 37,012 new tests in Monday's daily COVID-19 update. In total, the state has done 909,928 tests. Of the total tested, 51,746 or 5.69% have tested positive for the disease. The state says there are 988 pending tests. Tuesday's testing numbers were not immediately available.
But health experts told the Miami Herald last month they were concerned the number of pending COVID-19 tests listed by the state is an undercount because Florida reports only the number of Floridians waiting to get test results from state labs, not private ones _ and private labs are completing more than 90% of state tests.
Previously, it has taken as long as two weeks for the results of pending tests from private labs to be added into the state's official count, making it difficult for officials to project the size and scale of the pandemic in the state. It's unclear how quickly results are currently being sent to the state from private labs.
