MIAMI — Florida's Department of Health on Thursday confirmed 6,257 additional cases of COVID-19, bringing the state's known total to 827,380. Also, 39 resident deaths were announced, bringing the resident death toll to 16,961.
No new nonresident deaths were announced, leaving the nonresident toll at 209.
Since the beginning of October, Florida has seen some increase in newly confirmed cases. Thursday's single-day case count is the most Florida has reported since Aug. 15 when 6,352 cases were added — excluding Quest Diagnostics' data dump in September. Testing also saw some increase though it is not the highest number of people tested this month.
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 positivity 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 108,800 people tested on Wednesday. The positivity rate of new cases (people who tested positive for the first time) decreased from 7.73% to 6.20%.
If retests are included — people who have tested positive once and are being tested for a second time — the positivity rate decreased from 9.32% to 7.35%, according to the report.
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 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 2:16 p.m. EST Thursday, there were 2,527 COVID-19 patients admitted into hospitals throughout the state, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration dashboard. This is a significant 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 50,077 Florida residents hospitalized for COVID-19-related complications, according to Florida's COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard.
