300K+ have tested positive for COVID-19 in Florida as officials report 112 new deaths

More than 300,000 people have now tested positive for COVID-19 in Florida after state health officials reported another day of more than 10,000 new diagnoses.

With 10,181 diagnoses since Tuesday morning, the state has confirmed 301,810 COVID-19 cases, including among 3,934 non-residents in the state. The Department of Health also reported 112 new resident fatalities since Tuesday, raising the death toll to 4,521 Floridians and 105 non-Floridians.

The Wednesday morning update marks the third time the state reported 100 fatalities tied to the virus in a 24 hour period, which follows a record 133 confirmed deaths Tuesday.

And days of more than 10,000 new cases have become a regular occurrence, a stark change from early June when the state made headlines for a streak of more than 1,000 daily diagnoses. That streak never ended, as Florida continues to confirm several thousand new cases daily.

Driving the raw number of cases upward are record numbers of people seeking tests and an elevated positivity rate. For Tuesday, the positivity rate for possible new cases was 13.6%. That has averaged 14.2% over the past two weeks. The rate was below 3% in the last 14 days of May.

It took Florida 114 days to record its first 100,000 COVID-19 cases between March 1 and June 22. It took 13 days to record the second 100,000 and 10 days to reach the third.

The 10,181 new cases cover residents and non-residents confirmed positive Tuesday morning to Wednesday morning. For Tuesday only, the state diagnosed 10,085 positive residents.

The median age of Monday’s new positive residents was again 41, the oldest median age since state health officials began reporting the metric last month. Officials began including it after Gov. Ron DeSantis said the age had plummeted from the 50s to the early 30s in the second wave, or resurgent first, as he argued the new spread was mostly affecting low-risk Floridians.

More than 2.7 million individuals have been tested in Florida as federal officials provide temporary testing assistance in Jacksonville, providing about 34,000 samples daily until they pack up the operation Wednesday. On Tuesday, the state received results from 80,389 individuals, down from the record 142,970 individuals set Saturday.

The recent update also brought 453 new hospitalizations, lifting the total of those hospitalized to 19,334. At the time of publication, the Agency for Health Care Administration shows 8,276 individuals hospitalized with COVID-19, an increase of 87 from roughly a day earlier.

And 5,137, or 37 more, of the state’s 6,140 adult ICU beds are occupied, leaving 16.3% available. Some hospitals are starting to feel the crunch, with 51 showing full adult ICU wings. But Carlos Migoya, president and CEO of Jackson Health System, says the current stress on his hospital system is more about personnel than capacity.

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Editor’s note on methodology: The Florida Department of Health releases new data every morning around 10:45 a.m. The total number reported in those daily reports include the previous day’s totals as well as the most up to date data as of about 9:30 a.m.

Florida Politics uses the report-over-report increase to document the number of new cases each day because it represents the most up-to-date data available. Some of the more specific data, including positivity rates and demographics, considers a different data set that includes only cases reported the previous day.

This is important to note because the DOH report lists different daily totals than our methodology to show day-over-day trends. Their numbers do not include non-residents who tested positive in the state and they only include single-day data, therefore some data in the DOH report may appear lower than what we report.

Our methodology was established based on careful consideration among our editorial staff to capture both the most recent and accurate trends.