COVID-19 positivity rate hits lowest mark since mid-June as trends continue

Good signs for Florida continued Saturday as the COVID-19 testing positivity rate dropped to 7.7%.

Since Friday’s report, State health officials diagnosed 6,352 new cases and tied 204 fatalities to the pandemic.

Now 9,345 Florida residents have died with the disease, as have 135 non-residents.

Residents and non-residents reported to the Department of Health between Friday morning and Saturday morning make up the 6,352 new cases. For all day Friday, 6,397 residents tested positive.

Those mark a day-over increase from Friday’s report, but an increase in testing delivered to the department was the main contributor as the positivity rate declined. The seven-day average positivity rate fell to 8.9% with Saturday’s data for Friday, a little more than a week after average positivity rate first fell below 10%.

Florida has not seen a single-day positivity rate below 8% since mid-June. But Gov. Ron DeSantis is pointing to other signs that the pandemic is improving, including declining emergency department visits and statewide hospital census.

The emergency department visits suggest the pandemic has been declining since early July while the peak in test results came after and deaths reports continue to roll in.

While officials confirmed 506 additional Floridians hospitalized with COVID-19, the Agency for Health Care Administration reports 5,685 people are currently hospitalized with the disease, down 220 from 24 hours earlier. Overall, 33,661 Floridians have been hospitalized.

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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.