Staff Reports
Florida confirmed 3,377 more COVID-19 diagnoses and 20 deaths tied to the disease in a report released Monday by state health officials.
Overall, 782,013 people, including 10,024 nonresidents, have tested positive for the novel coronavirus in Florida. The death toll increased to 16,449 plus 203 nonresidents.
Over the weekend, the Sunshine State added 6,856 new cases and 89 deaths among residents while revising the nonresident death toll down one. Reports released Sundays and Mondays typically include fewer new cases, deaths and hospitalizations because new data from those reports largely encompass weekends.
The latest data update includes cases detailed between Sunday morning and Monday morning. For all day Sunday, officials counted 3,361 cases among residents, the median age of whom was 39.
Seven of the previous 14 days have seen percent positivity rates above 5%, with two days topping 6%. The positivity rate was 5.9% Sunday, up from 3.7% Friday and 4.7% Saturday.
The Governor’s Office has noticed a recent uptick in the number of new positives. Before the uptick in positivity rates, Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ communications director, Fred Piccolo, told Florida Politics that newly available rapid tests could be inspiring interest in testing. But he also acknowledged Phase Three and the full reopening of restaurants as probable factors driving an increase in cases.
The recent increase also comes after the state began initial talks on how low cases would need to go to drop the daily report’s frequency to weekly. Piccolo says there is no consensus yet and a decision is not imminent. DeSantis chimed in Thursday, indicating he had no preference on whether reports remained daily or were scaled back.
Some experts say a community should maintain rates below 5% for 14 days before reopening services like schools.
But DeSantis in past months has instead shifted the state’s focus away from the raw count and percent positivity rates. Instead, he has pointed to hospital visits with symptoms related to COVID-19 as his preferred metric.
Three weeks ago, the Department of Health reported its first week-over increase in hospital visits since the week of July 5, when visits peaked at 15,999. But hospital visits dropped from 5,051 that week to 4,900 the following week.
Last week, visits fell again to 4,467.
Overall, 48,281 Floridians have been hospitalized, an increase of 74 since Sunday’s report. The Agency for Health Care Administration reports that 2,116 people are currently hospitalized with the disease, a slight increase in active hospitalizations since Thursday morning.
In total, nearly 6 million Floridians have been tested for COVID-19, as have 22,828 non-residents 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.
One comment
Dan
October 26, 2020 at 7:07 pm
Since 85% of all Covid Positive tests are False Positives, I’m wondering what the real count is and can we rely on these Maxist numbers as well as their Propaganda.
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