Jacob Ogles
The Florida Department of Health reported 96 new COVID-19 related deaths Sunday. That’s a number once too horrible to grasp, but after months of routine triple-digit additions to the fatality count feels like a turn in the right direction.
According to data released by the state Sunday through 9:25 a.m., a total of 29,275 deaths in Florida have been tied to the pandemic since the coronavirus surfaced here in March. That includes 28,779 Florida residents who succumbed, along with 496 visitors to Florida who died while here.
The total caseload for infections climbed to 1,827,373 positive COVID-19 tests. That’s an increase of 5,436 since a daily report came out Saturday. The total includes 1,794,155 residents of Florida and 33,218 who tested positive while in the state.
The total number of Florida residents hospitalized since the dawn of the pandemic climbed to 76,109.
The positivity rate on the less than 100,000 new tests reported Saturday was 9.48%, with 9,437 new positive tests tallied that day and 90,095 negative ones.
That marks the sixth day in a row less than 10% of tests have been positive. That’s the threshold that generally indicated the spread of the virus is under control.
The positivity rate for only new cases for Florida residents was 6.97%.
Meanwhile, the effort to vaccinate Florida rolled forward. As of midday Sunday, health officials report 2,355,792 individuals gave received at least one shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. That includes 1,082,141 who have completed a two-dose schedule, and 1,273,651 who received a first dose and await appointments for a second.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have not over the weekend reported any new cases of the mutated strain B.1.1.7. Florida still leads all other states with the new strain out of the 37 where it has been detected. The Sunshine State has 347 of the 981 known cases in the U.S.
The concentration this week has led to heated rhetoric between Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, along with many GOP members of Congress, regarding consideration by President Joe Biden’s administration to impose travel restrictions on Florida.
The White House has downplayed those plans, releasing a statement that reads: “To be clear, there have been no decisions made around additional public health measures for domestic travel safety. The administration is continuing to discuss recommendations across the travel space, but no specific decisions are under consideration.”
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.
