Florida adds 11,433 coronavirus cases, just short of a daily record high
Florida’s Department of Health on Friday confirmed 11,433 new cases of COVID-19, making it the second highest single-day total recorded since the pandemic began in March.
The highest 24-hour total recorded in the state was on Saturday, with 11,458 new cases.
Florida now has 244,151 confirmed cases. There were also 93 new deaths announced, raising the statewide death toll to 4,102.
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Confirmed COVID-19 cases in Florida
▪ Miami-Dade County reported 2,380 additional confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 26 new deaths. The county now has 58,341 confirmed cases and 1,118 deaths, the highest in the state.
▪ Broward County reported 1,603 additional confirmed cases of the disease and 11 new deaths. The county now has 26,705 known cases and 438 deaths.
▪ Palm Beach County saw 577 additional confirmed cases and eight new deaths. The county now has 19,233 confirmed cases and 586 deaths.
▪ Monroe County reported 25 additional cases of the disease and no new deaths. The Florida Keys now have 470 confirmed cases and six deaths.
Here’s a breakdown on what you need to know:
How many people have recovered from coronavirus in Florida? It’s complicated
Confirmed COVID-19 cases in Florida
One of the tools that officials are relying 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.
On Friday, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration confirmed to the Miami Herald that a new column added to its reporting data includes current statewide and county-level hospitalizations.
.@AHCA_FL confirms, these are the current hospitalizations as measured by the state of Florida:
Statewide: 6,784 currently admitted.
State lists 1,388 for Miami-Dade. County reports 1,779. https://t.co/Xg91sQmer0— Ben Conarck (@conarck) July 10, 2020
Previously, the state was only providing 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 3:16 p.m. Friday, there are currently 6,974 COVID-19 patients admitted into hospitals throughout the state, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration dashboard.
The state has had a total of 17,602 COVID-19 related hospitalizations, according to Florida’s COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard.
The change comes following a surge of cases in recent weeks and as public health experts and the nonprofit COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer group that has become the most prolific coronavirus data collector in the country, pressure the state to start reporting current hospitalizations, saying the information is a clearer way of assessing how bad the pandemic is getting.
On Friday, Miami-Dade hospitalizations for COVID-19 complications rose to 1,779, according to Miami-Dade County’s “New Normal” dashboard. According to Friday’s data, 221 people were discharged and 189 people were admitted.
Baptist Health, one of the largest hospital systems in South Florida, told the Miami Herald Thursday its facilities were nearing capacity with the pace of new patient admissions testing the healthcare system’s limits even after administrators recently postponed non-emergency surgeries.
Florida’s recent surge in cases has also begun to produce an uptick in deaths, with the state health department announcing that a record 120 people died from COVID-19 on Thursday. Even before that high water mark, the trend of daily deaths reported by the state had begun to rise at a rate not seen since early May, when South Florida was still under lockdown.
Health experts say the lag time of confirming and announcing a COVID-19 related death makes it a difficult metric to analyze. But the rolling averages — considered by many public health experts as the best way to look at the information — have started to go back up after weeks of rising hospitalizations, which are a “leading indicator,” or an early warning of increased spread.
COVID-19 testing in Florida
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.
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.
On Friday, Florida’s Department of Health reported 95,348 new tests on Thursday. The positive rate was 15.30% of the total, according to the report. In total, 2,945,253 tests have been conducted.
To date, 2,423,992 people have been tested in Florida. Of the total tested, 244,151 (about 10.07%) have tested positive. The state says there are 1,911 tests with pending results. Friday’s testing data was not immediately available.
The state began adding antigen test results to Florida’s case totals last week. Antigen tests are a new category of tests that detect fragments of proteins found in the virus by testing samples collected by nose swabs. The FDA authorized the first antigen COVID-19 tests in May.
Miami Herald staff writers Daniel Chang and Ben Conarck contributed to this report.
