South Florida adds nearly 5.3K COVID-19 cases as positivity rate ticks up

South Florida has seen its COVID-19 case positivity rate fall following a post-holiday spike. But Friday’s Department of Health (DOH) report showed the number rising day-to-day in all three major counties.

Experts advise against reading too much into daily shifts in the data. Indeed, that metric has fluctuated throughout the pandemic. A one-day increase isn’t necessarily a sign that the virus is spiking once again.

Still, it’s a number worth keeping an eye on in the coming days given its fairly consistent drop over the past week or so.

Miami-Dade County’s positivity rate only ticked up a fraction of a percentage point from Thursday to Friday. But in Broward and Palm Beach, officials recorded more significant changes.

Broward’s positivity rate rose from 7.5% Thursday to 8.6% Friday. Palm Beach saw an even starker increase, jumping from 6.3% Thursday to 9.7% Friday.

Even with the increases, those numbers remain below the highs seen following the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. The case positivity rate can shed light into how fast the virus is spreading at a given time. Experts advise officials to keep that number below 5%.

Officials recorded 5,284 new cases in Friday’s DOH report. That puts the region above 590,000 cases since the pandemic began. That number should top 600,000 after the weekend.

Another 47 individuals in South Florida have died from the disease, according to Friday’s report. The region’s overall death toll now sits at 8,501.

Here are some of the weekly numbers for the previous three weeks throughout the South Florida tri-county area*:

Miami-Dade

— Dec. 25-31: 28 newly-reported hospitalizations per day, 12 newly-reported deaths per day, 2,442 new confirmed cases per day, 10.4% positivity rate

— Jan. 1-7: 35 newly-reported hospitalizations per day, 16 newly-reported deaths per day, 2,704 new confirmed cases per day, 10.8% positivity rate

— Jan. 8-14: 49 newly-reported hospitalizations per day, 28 newly-reported deaths per day, 2,545 new confirmed cases per day, 9.1% positivity rate

Broward

— Dec. 25-31: 31 newly-reported hospitalizations per day, 7 newly-reported deaths per day, 1,076 new confirmed cases per day, 9.2% positivity rate

— Jan. 1-7: 27 newly-reported hospitalizations per day, 7 newly-reported deaths per day, 1,189 new confirmed cases per day, 10.1% positivity rate

— Jan. 8-14: 25 newly-reported hospitalizations per day, 7 newly-reported deaths per day, 1,208 new confirmed cases per day, 8.6% positivity rate

Palm Beach

— Dec. 25-31: 29 newly-reported hospitalizations per day, 7 newly-reported deaths per day, 647 new confirmed cases per day, 9.4% positivity rate

— Jan. 1-7: 18 newly-reported hospitalizations per day, 6 newly-reported deaths per day, 825 new confirmed cases per day, 10.1% positivity rate

— Jan. 8-14: 13 newly-reported hospitalizations per day, 11 newly-reported deaths per day, 841 new confirmed cases per day, 8.9% positivity rate

*Due to breaks for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, the state did not release county-level death or hospitalization data for the days prior (Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve). Data from those dates on deaths and hospitalizations are not included in the averages above.