Staff Reports
More than 15,000 Floridians have died with COVID-19 as of Thursday after officials identified 171 new fatalities since the state’s previous report.
With the state fully open at Phase Three, new cases and deaths have continued a slow downward march, as have hospital visits for illnesses like COVID-19.
Overall, 726,013 people have tested positive for the virus in Florida, including 8,865 people who aren’t residents. The overall count is up 3,306 from Wednesday’s report from the Department of Health.
The state’s death toll reached 15,068 Thursday, not including the 186 non-residents that have died in the state.
Florida’s case fatality rate remains 2.1%, lower than the United States’ 2.8%. But the state’s mortality rate per 100,000 population is 69.8, higher than the 64.7 national rate and the 12th highest among states.
Despite the relatively average national case fatality rate, the United State’s mortality rate per 100,000 population is the 11th highest in the world. If Florida were ranked among countries by COVID-19 mortality by population, the state would rank the seventh highest globally, above Spain.
More than 212,000 people have died with COVID-19 nationally.
The 3,306 cases reported Thursday were confirmed between Wednesday morning and Thursday morning. All day Wednesday, the state recorded 3,296 cases with a median age of 39.
Those cases came from 77,485 tests issues, a relative high over the past two weeks. Twelve of the previous 14 days have seen percent positivity rates below 5%. Some experts say a community should maintain rates below 5% for 14 days before reopening services like schools.
But Gov. Ron DeSantis has instead shifted the state’s focus on hospital visits with symptoms related to COVID-19. Last week, medical professionals reported 3,522 visits, a 12th consecutive week of decline since visits peaked at 15,999 the week of July 5.
Overall, 45,483 Floridians have been hospitalized, an increase of 224 since Wednesday’s report. But the Agency for Health Care Administration reports that 2,140 people are currently hospitalized with the disease.
In total, 5.5 million Floridians have been tested for COVID-19, as have 21,590 nonresidents in the state.
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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.
