Staff Reports
State health officials reported 46 deaths among residents with COVID-19 Tuesday morning as Florida looks to put the summer COVID-19 resurgence behind it.
With the latest update, which includes findings made since Monday morning, 11,915 residents and 152 non-residents have died in the Sunshine State. The most deaths confirmed in a single daily report was 276 on Aug. 11.
In the last seven days, the the death toll has grown by 77 Floridians per day, the fewest since fatalities began spiking in July. In mid-August, the seven-day rolling average reached 185 deaths per day.
Overall, 650,092 Floridians have tested positive after the Department of Health added 1,823 cases in the last 24 hours. The total includes 7,317 non-residents who tested positive in the state.
The new cases cover results returned between Monday morning and Tuesday morning. For all-day Monday, DOH received 1,831 positive cases with a median age of 40, a drop from a recent high of 46 as schools and universities reopen but up from a median of 35 two days prior.
The fastest-growing age cohort for the virus is Floridians aged 15 to 24. Of those positive cases from Sunday, 412 — or 23% — of all positives came from that age group.
Throughout August, 14% of cases were aged 15 to 24. Through the first seven days of September, 25% of those testing positive fell in that age cohort.
The summer Sunbelt COVID-19 resurgence was precipitated by a surge in COVID-19 cases among younger Floridians. In June, Gov. Ron DeSantis pointed to a dramatic drop in the median age of positive cases from the 50s to the mid and low 30s.
Before the recent uptick, the share of new cases was roughly evenly distributed across those aged 15 to 64, spanning five age cohorts. The number of new cases aged 15 to 24 is now more than double that of the next-closest age cohort.
Because of inconsistent reporting and the lag times for confirming cases, DeSantis has shifted his focus to emergency department visits. But the Governor’s Communications Director, Fred Piccolo, told Florida Politics that people between 15 and 24 are “by far the best equipped to handle and not pass on COVID-19.”
“It is a statistic we are monitoring but as Dr. (Scott) Atlas said, cases are not the metric to gauge success,” Piccolo said in an email. “Symptomatic infection and mortality rates are where we should keep our focus.”
Outbreaks in schools will happen, but spread among low-risk children would do little to spread it to adults, Atlas — a recent appointee to the White House Coronavirus Task Force — told reporters during a three-stop tour of Florida 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. Last week, those visits dropped to 1,841 and 3,290, respectively, for an eighth consecutive week of decline.
Overall, 40,195 Floridians have been hospitalized, an increase of 112 since Monday’s report. But the Agency for Health Care Administration reports that 3,154 people are currently hospitalized with the disease, down six from 24 hours earlier, and the lowest since the agency began reporting that metric.
In total, 4.8 million Floridians have been tested for COVID-19, as have 20,018 nonresidents in the state. On Monday, DOH received 40,893 test results.
The positivity rate Sunday rose from 4.5% to 5%. Over the last seven days, each day’s positivity rate has averaged 5.3%.
The state’s self-imposed target threshold is 10%, but some medical experts have pointed to 5% as when services like schools could start reopening.
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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 nonresidents 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.
