130 deaths, 11K new diagnoses reported Friday in COVID-19 pandemic

State health officials reported 128 additional dead Floridians and two dead non-residents in a Friday morning update as the state tallied another day with more than 10,000 new diagnoses.

With 11,466 newly confirmed cases, 327,241 people have tested positive throughout the pandemic that has claimed the lives of at least 4,805 residents and 107 non-residents. And 366 confirmed hospitalizations in the last 24 hours put the state over 20,000 hospitalized residents, now 20,191.

Before this week, the 130 dead residents would have been a record-breakingly deadly day. But on Thursday, the state reported 150 fatalities, which followed up on 133 fatalities in Tuesday’s update.

The Friday update marks the fifth time and fourth consecutive instance the state reported 100 fatalities tied to the virus.

The 11,466 new cases cover residents and non-residents confirmed positive Thursday morning to Friday morning. For all day Thursday, the state diagnosed 11,345 positive residents.

On Wednesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis was asked about the rising number of deaths. In recent weeks, he had pointed to a falling mortality rate as more younger individuals tested positive.

“It’s something that we take very, very seriously,” he said. “We’re doing all we can because every life counts, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re 10 years old, 30 years old or 90 years old, we want to be there to do the best we can to help folks, particularly those who are the most vulnerable to a nasty virus.”

Deaths are a lagging indicator of the virus, coming at least three weeks behind upticks in cases. About five weeks ago, Florida began seeing multiple thousands of new cases daily.

But a rising number of the state’s elderly population, an at-risk demographic for severe infects, have tested positive in the weeks since the median age of new cases plummeted from the 50s to the early 30s throughout the end of May and beginning of April.

The median age of Thursday’s new positive residents was back to 41, the oldest median age since state health officials began reporting the metric last month.

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.

On Wednesday, Florida crossed 300,000 COVID-19 cases. 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. Two days later, the state is more than a quarter of the way to the fourth 100,000.

Driving the raw number of cases upward are record numbers of people seeking tests and an elevated positivity rate. For Thursday, the positivity rate for possible new cases was 11.9%. That has averaged 14.1% over the past two weeks, above the state’s target 10%, but the average has trended down over the last week.

The rate was below 3% in the second half of May.

Nearly 2.9 million individuals have been tested in Florida, including 103,929 Thursday. That is rising again but down from the record 142,970 individuals set Saturday, and more than the state had tested in a single day a week ago.

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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.