Florida reports another 7.4K COVID-19 cases

The state of Florida confirmed 7,401 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, according to Department of Health data released Saturday.

The latest report of new cases caps a week of daily caseloads dancing above 7,000. Since the start of the pandemic, the state has confirmed 1,821,937 cases — 1,788,827 Floridians and 33,110 non-state residents.

Since the last report, the state has also reported 118 new deaths related to COVID-19, bringing the virus’ death toll in the Sunshine State to 29,179.

For the fifth day in a row, the state saw overall positivity rates for tests on Friday come in below 10%, at 8.42%, reflecting 11,486 new positives and 124,962 negatives. As far as only new cases for Florida residents the positivity rate was 6.44%.

Health officials consider the spread of the virus under control when fewer than 10% of tests in a day come back positive.

However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that Florida had 347 cases of the B.1.1.7 mutated virus, causing concern, and leading to speculation on potential travel restrictions on the state.

President Joe Biden’s administration has floated the idea of putting rules in place to contain the variant, with Florida having the highest concentration in the U.S. Infections were recently discovered at the University of Central Florida campus.

Amid the spread, the state is working to distribute vaccinations to seniors and health care workers. So far, Florida has vaccinated 2,293,883 individuals, roughly half of whom (1,028,315) have completed the vaccine series.

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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, considers 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.