Florida crosses 7K dead residents after 179 COVID-19 fatalities reported

State health officials reported a slight reprieve in the rising death toll after confirming the deaths of 179 residents Saturday. But a week ago, that would have been a daily record.

This week, Florida tallied four straight days of record-setting daily death tolls. The streak carried through Friday, when the Department of Health (DOH) reported 257 dead residents.

Florida is now five months from when officials first reported COVID-19 diagnoses on March 1. But this week has been the deadliest week of the pandemic, with 1,245 fatalities.

In no week prior has DOH reported 1,000 deaths. In total, 7,022 Floridians have died with COVID-19, as have 122 non-residents in the state.

But while the high mortality continues, the testing positivity rate has tracked downward, a trend Gov. Ron DeSantis has stressed in recent weeks.

Between Friday morning and Saturday morning, DOH confirmed 9,642 new cases among Florida residents and non-residents, putting the entire week below 10,000 daily diagnoses. For all day Friday, the state confirmed cases in 9,658 residents.

In total, 480,028 people, including 5,407 non-residents, have tested positive in Florida. Only California, with more than half a million cases, has had more diagnoses.

The percent positivity rate rose slightly to 11.8%, but helped drive down the seven-day testing average to 11.4%. That’s down from the more than 15% of people that were testing positive at the start of July, but still above the state’s 10% goal and above the 3% that were testing positive in the second half of May.

Another 439 Floridians were hospitalized with COVID-19. Throughout the pandemic, 26,972 Floridians have been hospitalized.

The Agency for Health Care Administration reports 8,249 people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, a decrease of 170 in the last 24 hours.

Nearly 3.7 million individuals have been tested for COVID-19. That includes more than 100,000 who were tested Friday.

Department of Corrections Secretary Mark Inch has tested positive for COVID-19, becoming the highest ranking state official to do so. He and Deputy Secretary Ricky Dixon tested positive after Inch recently returned from Columbia Correctional Institution, a North Florida prison where 1,300 inmates and 72 corrections workers have tested positive for the virus, according to a press release issued by corrections officials.

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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.