Ryan Nicol
Another 54 people in South Florida’s tri-county area have lost their lives to COVID-19.
That’s down from Wednesday’s death toll of 65. The drop comes after the daily death toll in the region rose for four straight days. The death toll more than doubles from Sunday’s report — which recorded 30 new deaths — to Wednesday’s total of 65.
The death toll is one major metric which has yet to consistently fall across the tri-county area, which includes Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. More than 4,600 residents have died in total as of Thursday.
The newest report from the Department of Health covers data received from Wednesday morning through Thursday morning.
On the positive side, hospitalizations, new confirmed cases and positivity rates are dropping over the past three weeks in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. The same is true for new cases and the positivity rate in Broward.
Broward’s hospitalizations did spike last week, making it an outlier in the region. Hospitalizations have declined this week.
The region added 1,068 new cases in total Thursday. Miami-Dade recorded 622 new cases, while Broward added 264 cases and Palm Beach tallied 182 cases. That total of 1,068 is about a quarter of what the region recorded daily as recently as last month.
South Florida has pushed to begin slowly reopening with most COVID-19 metrics dropping in the region. However, in a Thursday call, experts warned the tourism industry could face a much longer recovery and would be heavily hit should cases spike up once again during flu season.
Here are some of the weekly numbers for the previous three weeks throughout the South Florida tri-county area:
Miami-Dade
— Aug. 6-12: 70 new hospitalizations per day, 24 deaths per day, 1,891 new confirmed cases per day, 14.3% positivity rate
— Aug. 13-19: 58 new hospitalizations per day, 33 deaths per day, 1,184 new confirmed cases per day, 10.6% positivity rate
— Aug. 20-26: 32 new hospitalizations per day, 23 deaths per day, 803 new confirmed cases per day, 8.4% positivity rate
Broward
— Aug. 6-12: 85 new hospitalizations per day, 14 deaths per day, 692 new confirmed cases per day, 9.3% positivity rate
— Aug. 13-19: 93 new hospitalizations per day, 24 deaths per day, 492 new confirmed cases per day, 7.4% positivity rate
— Aug. 20-26: 53 new hospitalizations per day, 17 deaths per day, 308 new confirmed cases per day, 5.4% positivity rate
Palm Beach
— Aug. 6-12: 30 new hospitalizations per day, 10 deaths per day, 350 new confirmed cases per day, 7.5% positivity rate
— Aug. 13-19: 22 new hospitalizations per day, 11 deaths per day, 238 new confirmed cases per day, 6.1% positivity rate
— Aug. 20-26: 21 new hospitalizations per day, 8 deaths per day, 192 new confirmed cases per day, 4.6% positivity rate
___
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.
