MIAMI _ Florida's Department of Health on Tuesday confirmed 3,289 additional cases of COVID-19, bringing the state's total to 103,506. There were also 64 new deaths announced, raising the statewide death toll to 3,237.
A Miami Herald analysis of public and nonpublic COVID-19 data found that through June 3, new cases in Florida had consistently been trending up since mid-May and the trends could not be attributed solely to increases in testing.
And as bars, gyms, vacation rentals and movie theaters reopened at partial capacity in all but three South Florida counties, the number and rate of new COVID-19 cases were rising statewide _ a troubling indicator that the disease could be spreading more quickly.
Less than half of the new cases and less than half of the new deaths were in South Florida, according to the Florida Department of Health's COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard.
One of the tools that officials are relying on to determine if 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 health department says it does not "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 Tuesday, 199 hospitalizations were added, bringing the statewide total to 13,318.
While Florida's Department of Health is not releasing current statewide hospitalization data to the public, hospitals in Miami-Dade are self-reporting a number of key metrics, including hospitalizations, to the county, which has made this data public. Some provide updates every day; others don't.
On Tuesday, Miami-Dade hospitalizations hit an all-time high for the second day in a row with 818 patients, according to Miami-Dade County's "New Normal" dashboard data. According to Tuesday's data, 108 people were discharged and 114 people were admitted.
Scientists are also still working to learn more about the virus, including how many people in the community are infected 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 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.
The recommended number of daily tests needed varies among experts, but the dean of the University of South Florida's College of Medicine told the governor that Florida needs to test about 33,000 people every day.
Florida's Department of Health reported 37,169 new tests Sunday in Monday's daily COVID-19 update. The positive rate was 8.98% of the total, according to the report. In total, and 1,911,676 tests have been conducted.
To date, 1,618,540 people have been tested in Florida. Of the total tested, 100,217 (about 6.19%) have tested positive. The state says there are 1,546 tests with pending results. Tuesday's testing results were not immediately available.
Health experts have previously told the Miami Herald that they were concerned the number of pending results listed by the state is an undercount. This is because Florida's Health Department only announces the number of pending 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 pending test results 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, as the turnaround time varies by lab.
