More than 7K new COVID-19 cases as testing bounces back

After three days of lower than normal test results following then Hurricane-Isaias’ threat to Florida’s Atlantic coast, state health officials received results from more than 100,000 individuals.

Those results, returned Wednesday, helped contribute to the 7,650 new COVID-19 cases identified in the state’s Thursday morning report. That marks the most new positives this month, but still down from the 10,000 or more positives identified on some July days.

In total, 510,389 people, including 5,621 non-Floridians, have tested positive in the state. On Wednesday, the state crossed 500,000 total diagnoses.

It took Florida 114 days to record its first 100,000 COVID-19 cases between March 1 and June 22. The next 400,000 cases took only 44 days.

The percent positivity rate also continued falling Wednesday, with 8.3% of individuals’ tests returning positive. Over the last seven days, positivity rates have averaged 10%, right at the state’s listed 10% threshold goal.

The Department of Health also recorded 120 deaths in its Thursday update, still a large number, but a respite from the more than 200 daily fatalities recently confirmed on weekdays.

Florida was on track to record more deaths this week than last week’s record-setting 1,245 dead residents. In total, 7,747 Floridians and 124 non-residents have died in the state.

While new cases and deaths are both down, confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations stayed near recent highs, with 558 more Florida residents confirmed in hospitals with the disease. In total, the state has hospitalized 29,131 residents.

However, the Agency for Health Care Administration reports that 7,349 individuals are currently hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of COVID-19, 271 fewer than about 24 hours earlier.

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday told reporters that he now prefers emergency department visits over testing positivity rates as the best metric to track the virus’ movement.

Visits for cough and fever have been in decline since early July, and visits for shortness of breath have been in decline since mid-July.

The new diagnoses reported Thursday comprised residents and non-residents whose diagnoses DOH confirmed between Wednesday morning and Thursday morning. For all day Wednesday, the state confirmed cases in 7,683 residents.

On Wednesday, Florida received test results from 104,144 individuals, the most since July 24. In total, the state has tested nearly 3.9 million people for COVID-19.

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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.