Florida crosses 600K COVID-19 diagnoses Sunday

More than 600,000 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Florida as of Sunday’s report.

After the Department of Health (DOH) confirmed 2,974 new cases since releasing Saturday’s report, the state’s overall caseload raised to 600,571. That includes 594,287 Florida residents and 6,284 non-residents who tested positive in the Sunshine State.

Meanwhile, California, the state with the most COVID-19 diagnoses, has more than 650,000 confirmed cases. Texas has more than 570,000 cases in total.

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. But with diagnoses slowing down this month, it took 18 days to confirm the next 100,000 and cross 600,000.

Fewer people seeking tests and a decreased positivity rate have driven down the daily diagnoses.

In July, nearly 100,000 people received test results per day, but on Saturday, only 61,686 people received results. Overall, 4.4 million Floridians and 19,000 non-residents have received test results in Florida.

The positivity rate was 5.5% Saturday, a day after it fell below 5% for the first time since June. The seven-day rolling average fell from 7% to 6.7%.

Ten percent is the state’s self-imposed target threshold, but some medical experts have pointed to 5% as when services like schools could start reopening.

The department also confirmed 51 fatalities, the fewest since the daily death toll began increasing in July.

However, the new data in the state’s daily COVID-19 reports on Sundays only include new data collected over the weekend. New diagnoses, deaths and hospitalizations are typically lower in Sunday reports.

On Thursday, DOH reported that it had confirmed the 10,000th death of a Florida resident. As of Sunday, 10,325 residents and 137 non-Floridians have died in the state.

Despite the decreasing testing positivity rate, Gov. Ron DeSantis has stopped highlighting the metric in his recent public appearances. Emergency department visits, he says, offer realtime data and aren’t contingent on reporting from private testing labs.

The week of July 5 saw 6,255 emergency department visits with flu-like illnesses and 15,999 for illnesses like COVID-19. Last week, those visits dropped to 2,001 and 4,097 respectively.

An additional 139 residents were confirmed hospitalized, down from recent highs above 500 people. And the statewide hospital census has been declining.

Overall, 36,468 people have been hospitalized. But the Agency for Health Care Administration reports 4,578 people are currently hospitalized with the disease, down 193 from 24 hours earlier.

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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.