Officials count 6,257 new COVID-19 cases, 39 deaths in Thursday update

For the first time since mid-August, state health officials counted more than 6,000 new COVID-19 diagnoses made in the previous 24 hours.

The Department of Health Thursday reported 6,257 new cases, along with 39 deaths. With that update, 827,380 people, including 11,004 non-Florida residents, have tested positive in Florida while 16,961 Floridians have died.

The latest data includes cases detailed between Wednesday morning and Thursday morning. For all day Wednesday, officials counted 6,164 cases among residents from 108,800 individuals tested, the second time in a week that more than 6,000 people have tested positive one day. Among the new positives, the median age was 38.

For seven consecutive days, the positivity rate has topped 5%, down to 6.2% Wednesday after reaching 7.7% the day before. Some experts say a community should maintain rates below 5% for 14 days before reopening services like schools.

For weeks weeks, the Governor’s Office has acknowledged an uptick in the number of new positives, but Gov. Ron DeSantis has emphasized that Florida will keep its reopening course. Before the uptick in positivity rates, the Governor’s 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.

New cases have increased across the country, particularly in the Midwest, and the nation has seen record-setting days for new infections.

In Florida, DeSantis has shifted the state’s data focus away from the raw count and percent positivity rates, instead, pointing to hospital visits with symptoms related to COVID-19 as his preferred metric.

Four 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. Last week, the state showed that initially visits falling to 4,467 the week prior, but that has since been revised to an increase up to 5,242

Last week, visits fell again to 4,828.

As of Thursday, more than 50,000 Floridians have been hospitalized after DOH tallied an increase of 188 to 50,077. The Agency for Health Care Administration reports that 2,523 people are currently hospitalized with the disease, an increase in over recent weeks.

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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.