Jacob Ogles
State of Florida health officials tallied more than 8,000 new cases of COVID-19 overnight.
A Wednesday report from the Florida Department of Health showed 1,676,171 million positive tests in the state since the novel coronavirus first surfaced here in March. That includes 30,664 visitors to Florida who tested positive here, with the remainder being Florida residents.
The state also added another 169 deaths to its tally since the Tuesday report, bringing total deaths here to 26,249. That included 25,833 Florida residents and 416 from out-of-state who died here.
A total of 71,155 people have been hospitalized in Florida with COVID-19.
The state continues to see positivity rates above 10% most days, and Tuesday was no exception. A total of 12,358 positive test results were added to the state database, compared to 84,299 negatives. That calculates to a positivity rate of 12.79%, the highest positivity rate in the state since last Thursday.
Only once in the past month has the positivity rate come below 10%, when it was 8.37% on Friday. Prior to that, positivity rates remained high since before Christmas.
Meanwhile, just shy of 1.7 million doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines have been administered in Florida, according to the latest data released Wednesday. A total of 1,494,003 individuals have received at least a first shot of vaccine, including 1,290,157 who received a first inoculation and 203,846 who already received a booster, completing the vaccine schedule.
A total of 1,042,067 individuals age 65 and older have received at least a dose of vaccine, with 55,585 having already received a second shot.
Meanwhile, Florida officials expect a slight uptick in the number of vaccines being distributed to states. Gov. Ron DeSantis characterized the expected boost as a “modest increase.” Florida expected to receive another 307,000 vaccines next week, an increase of about 40,000 from the prior week.
The latest updates came the same day Florida Surgeon General Scott Rivkees addressed the Legislature, though many members of the subcommittee where he presented were left frustrated by an inability to ask questions.
