MIAMI — Florida's Department of Health on Tuesday confirmed 7,459 additional cases of COVID-19, bringing the state's known total to nearly 900,000 at 897,323, the third highest in the nation after Texas and California.
The state also announced 85 resident deaths, bringing the resident death toll to 17,644.
On Tuesday, the cumulative nonresident toll was 216, which was an increase of one from Monday's report.
The state's number of new cases has been rising steadily; the daily average of new cases in the past seven days has topped 6,000 cases, levels haven't seen since mid-August, according to The New York Times database of U.S. case counts.
One of the tools 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.
Previously, the state was providing only 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 6:15 p.m. EST Tuesday, there were 3,369 COVID-19 patients admitted into hospitals throughout the state, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration dashboard. This is a decrease from early August, when more than 5,000 COVID-19 patients were admitted into hospitals throughout the state.
The state has had a total of 52,329 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 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 Tuesday, Florida's Department of Health reported the results of 94,738 people tested on Monday. The positivity rate of new cases (people who tested positive for the first time) increased from 7.94% to 8.64%.
