50 deaths, 808 new COVID-19 cases reported in Florida Thursday

State health officials confirmed 50 deaths, including two non-Floridians, in the last 24 hours, raising the state’s death toll to 1,948 Thursday.

The report also shows 808 newly-confirmed cases since Wednesday’s report, raising the state’s caseload to 43,210. Those new cases include six non-residents, increasing the total to 1,172.

The Department of Health (DOH) only includes Floridians in its death toll, which it shows as 1,875. The report includes 154 new resident hospitalizations and four non-resident hospitalizations. In total, 7,993 people, including 7,749 residents, have been hospitalized during the pandemic.

In nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, the state now shows 814 deaths, an increase from 776 the day before. Gov. Ron DeSantis has made protecting nursing homes a focus of the state’s response to COVID-19.

On Thursday, he cleared Miami-Dade and Broward counties to join the rest of the state in Phase One, as he did with Palm Beach County last week. South Florida has been the state’s COVID-19 hot spot throughout the pandemic.

In Miami-Dade County, DOH reports 14,742 cases, an increase from Wednesday’s 14,468 cases. Now 544 people have died, including 535 residents.

In Broward County, the department reports 6,057 cases, up from 5,998. The death toll rose to 288 people, including 267 residents.

Both counties have seen emergency department admissions for influenza-like and COVID-19-like symptoms decline by two-thirds or more since March.

The state received a record 23,904 COVID-19 diagnostic tests Monday. On Thurday, the state received 17,798 results, raising the total number of tested individuals to 609,574.

Another 1,228 people await results from DOH-coordinated labs. But thousands more samples unknown to the department are likely pending results in private labs.

The percent of positive results among people who had never before tested positive had dropped to 1.83% last week, down from 10% when DOH first reported the metric. But on Tuesday and Wednesday, that percentage was back up to 5.24% and 4.77% respectively. Tuesday’s percentage was the highest reported this month.