MIAMI — Florida's Department of Health on Saturday confirmed 4,452 additional cases of COVID-19, bringing the state's known total to 837,077. Also, 86 resident deaths were announced, bringing the resident death toll to 17,100.
The state did not report any additional non-resident deaths, leaving the non-resident toll at 210, according to Florida's COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard.
Since the beginning of October, Florida has seen an increase in newly confirmed cases, and Saturday is the seventh consecutive day that the state's single-day case count is higher than 4,000. On Thursday, Florida reported 6,257 cases of COVID-19, the most seen since mid-August — excluding Quest Diagnostics' data dump.
Note: The Florida Department of Health says that each county's percent positivity for new cases (people who tested positive for the first time) does not include retests (people who have tested positive once and are being tested for a second time).
Because the threat of Tropical Storm Eta county COVID testing sites in Miami-Dade were closed Saturday and would remain closed until the storm passes and they could reopen safely, Mayor Carlos Gimenez said Saturday.
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 9:45 a.m. Saturday, there were 2,603 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.
Of Saturday morning's hospitalizations, 344 were in Miami-Dade, 279 in Broward, 154 in Palm Beach and five in Monroe counties, according to the agency.
Florida's current hospitalization data do 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 Saturday, Miami-Dade hospitalizations for COVID-19 complications increased from 416 to 427, according to Miami-Dade County's "New Normal" dashboard. According to Saturday's data, 62 people were discharged and 72 people were admitted.
The state has had a total of 50,426 Florida residents hospitalized for COVID-19-related complications, according to Florida's COVID-19 State Report.
Testing in Florida has seen steady growth since the COVID-19 crisis began.
Testing, like hospitalizations, helps officials determine the virus' 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 Saturday, Florida's Department of Health reported the results of 58,301 people tested on Friday. The positivity rate of new cases (people who tested positive for the first time) increased from 6.36% to 8.28%.
