Record 191 people reported dead with COVID-19 in Florida Tuesday

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State health officials confirmed the deaths of 186 Floridians and five non-residents in the state in the last 24 hours, making Tuesday’s COVID-19 update from the Department of Health the deadliest yet.

With the 191 fatalities, now 6,117 residents have died, as have 123 non-residents. On Monday, the state crossed 6,000 total fatalities.

Before Tuesday, Thursday the state’s deadliest day, when officials reported 173 deaths.

The spike in mortality comes after a weekend with uncharacteristically few confirmed deaths, even accounting for the usual weekend dip in reported fatalities, hospitalizations and diagnoses. Sunday’s report included 78 deaths while Monday’s brought 77 more.

On Saturday, the seven-day average of fatalities was 127 per day. That rolling average was up to 131 Tuesday.

Officials also counted 9,230 new diagnoses. As of Tuesday, 441,977 people, including 436,867 residents, have tested positive for the virus.

Florida now has 2,034 cases per 100,000 residents, meaning more than one in 50 Floridians have tested positive for COVID-19. Meanwhile, the mortality rate is 1.4%.

The new diagnoses cover residents and non-residents confirmed positive Monday to Tuesday morning. For all day Monday, the state diagnosed 9,243 positive residents.

But Tuesday marks the third-straight day officials counted fewer than 10,000 cases while the percent positivity rate remained relatively stable after a slight increase to 11.7%, equivalent to the seven-day average positivity rate.

While the percent positivity rate has dropped from 15% to 11%, it hasn’t fallen below the state’s target 10% threshold. In the second half of May, that rate was below 3%.

Health officials counted 585 new hospitalized residents for a total now of 24,917. Currently 8,974 people are hospitalized, according to the Agency for Health Care Administration.

This week, Florida crossed New York for the state with the second-most number of confirmed cases, and media attention has fallen on the state and Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ handling of the pandemic. Coinciding with the start of a clinical trial for a COVID-19 vaccine, Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Miami to throw his support behind the Governor.

“We are encouraged, Governor, by the favorable trends here in Florida,” he said, “But just like you, I want people of the state to know that we’re going to continue to make sure the resources are there to ensure that anyone in Florida impacted by the coronavirus will have the same level of care that any of us would want a family member of ours to have.”

Pence said there was no better place to host the roundtable than at the University of Miami.

“I hope you take it and the whole team takes it as a great compliment and a great statement of confidence in the professionalism of all of the great health care teams here in Miami,” he added.

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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.