Staff Reports
The Florida Department of Health (DOH) on Sunday reported 6,820 more COVID-19 cases in the Sunshine State, raising the state’s COVID-19 count to 843,897 cases.
State health officials also reported 21 new COVID-19 related deaths within the latest 24-hour reporting period. According to the DOH, 17,121 Florida residents have died while infected with the novel coronavirus. Another 212 nonresidents have also died in the state.
Notably, COVID-19 cases and deaths reported by state health officials can sometimes be reported days or weeks later.
New cases, meanwhile, have increased across the country, particularly in the Midwest, and the nation has seen record-setting days for new infections. According to the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the United States is managing over 9.9 million COVID-19 cases and recorded 237,425 COVID-19 related deaths as of Sunday.
In Florida, the median age of COVID-19 cases is 40-years-old.
Meanwhile, Gov. Ron 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.
As of Sunday, 2,777 people are hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of COVID-19. The latest reporting period showed an increase of 105 hospitalizations.
In all, 27.2% of Florida’s hospital beds remain available as well as 26.2% of beds in the state’s adult intensive care unit.
For 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.
The DeSantis administration has also worked to scale back nursing restrictions enacted because of the coronavirus. Earlier this month, the Governor said he wanted to make it easier for long-term care facility residents to reunite with families for the holidays.
With Thanksgiving less than three weeks away, Florida logged 102 new COVID-19 related deaths in long-term care facilities during the past week. In all, 6,873 long-term care facility residents and staff members have died while infected with the virus.
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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.
