State health officials report 2,402 COVID-19 cases, 128 resident deaths

State health officials reported 2,402 COVID-19 cases and 128 resident deaths Wednesday as favorable signs continue in Florida.

Those updated counts reflect confirmations made in the last 24 hours.

The death toll grew by 121 since Tuesday’s report. Despite confirming 128 resident fatalities, DOH removed one dead Floridian from its logs. At least another three non-residents died.

In total, 11,501 Floridians and 150 non-Floridians have died with COVID-19 in Florida. Over the last seven days, the death toll has grown by an average of 110 residents, down from a peak average of 185 nearly a month ago.

Overall, 633,442 people, including 7,016 non-residents, have tested positive for COVID-19 in the Sunshine State.

The new cases cover results returned between Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning. But for all-day Tuesday, DOH received 2,575 positive results with a median age of 41.

Both daily positive tests and the daily positivity rate have been declining, but the average positivity rate remained level Tuesday. The day’s rate was 5.6%, down slightly from the 5.7% DOH shows as a revised count for Monday. The average positivity rate over seven days was again 5.5%.

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.

On Tuesday, the department and the Division of Emergency management announced they had cut ties with Quest Diagnostics, one of the state’s largest private testing labs, over repeated data backlogs. The issue came to a head Monday evening when Quest added 3,870 positive cases from nearly 75,000 unreported results dating back to late April.

“The law requires all COVID-19 results to be reported to DOH in a timely manner,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “To drop this much unusable and stale data is irresponsible. I believe that Quest has abdicated their ability to perform a testing function in Florida that the people can be confident in.”

The incident marks the second time the department has placed an asterisk over a day’s results. Last month, DOH noted a batch of data released by Niznik Lab Corp, prompting the stricter enforcement.

Because of inconsistent reporting and the lag times for confirming cases, DeSantis has shifted his focus to emergency department visits.

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. 16, those visits dropped to 1,889 and 3,559 respectively for a seventh consecutive week of decline.

Overall, 39,158 Floridians have been hospitalized, an increase of 299 since Tuesday’s report. But the Agency for Health Care Administration reports that 3,529 people are currently hospitalized with the disease, down 95 from 24 hours earlier and the lowest since the agency began reporting that metric.

DOH has received results from 4.7 million Floridians and 19,687 non-residents tested for the virus. On Monday, it received 50,707 results.

As schools reopen, DOH is tracking cases in the state’s youth. For the first time in a week, the department updated its report on cases among those 17 and younger.

Surgeon General Scott Rivkees told reporters Monday that the report is published weekly on Wednesdays. But the department began publishing it daily at the beginning of August before putting it on hold again on Aug. 26. The update showed a total of 51,311 cases among Florida’s children.

The youngest person to die in Florida was a 6-year-old Hillsborough County girl.

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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.