Florida’s COVID-19 positivity rate is in the single digits for seventh straight day

Fewer than 10% of people tested for COVID-19 received positive results over the past week, according to state health officials.

On Monday, 7.9% of the results came back positive.

Since the pandemic’s peak in mid-July, Florida has seen outbreaks improving across the state. Emergency department visits have declined, the statewide hospital census has declined and new cases have fallen to levels not seen since June.

At the height of the pandemic, one report charted an 18.4% positivity rate and another one tallied 15,300 new cases in Florida.

Tuesday’s report brought 3,838 new diagnoses. Overall, 579,932 individuals, including 6,121 non-Florida residents, have tested positive in the state.

The new cases cover residents and non-residents confirmed positive Monday morning to Tuesday morning. For all-day Monday, the state diagnosed 3,922 positive residents, with a median age of 43.

Together with the depressed positivity rate, officials received 56,884 test results. Through Tuesday morning, 4.3 million Floridians have been tested, as have 19,000 non-residents in the state.

Nearly 10,000 Floridians have died with COVID-19, and the state confirmed 219 deaths since Monday’s report. The daily death toll has plateaued with the seven-day average ranging from 155 to 181 this month. That metric, which helps eliminate the weekly ebb and flow of data, is 172 with Tuesday’s report.

But deaths are also a lagging indicator of the pandemic. Deaths can occur weeks after someone tests positive, and people testing positive were likely infected a week or more prior.

Of those 219 newly-confirmed deaths, 24 occurred outside the last 30 days and beyond the scope of the report’s timeline. Of those visible new fatalities, 31 occurred on Saturday.

Within the last 30 days, July 20 was the deadliest day when 184 Floridians died.

And while newly confirmed hospitalizations remain high — 501 in Tuesday’s report — hospitals are showing improving trends.

Overall, 34,695 people have been hospitalized. But the Agency for Health Care Administration reports 5,483 people are currently hospitalized with the disease, down 148 from 24 hours earlier.

Emergency department visits declined last week. The week of July 5 saw 6,255 emergency department visits with flu-like illnesses and 15,999 for illnesses like COVID-19. For the week of Aug. 9, those visits dropped to 2,187 and 4,835 respectively.

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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, consider 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.