Kelly Hayes
Florida confirmed 5,469 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, according the Department of Health’s latest daily report released Saturday afternoon.
The number of new cases is only a slight decline over the past week’s trend: on Thursday, the state confirmed nearly 6,000 new cases, and on Wednesday, reported about 6,500 new cases.
The state also recorded 110 new Florida resident deaths in the latest report, as well as eight non-resident deaths. Since the start of the pandemic, the state has reported 31,280 deaths related to the virus, including 30,734 residents and 546 non-Florida residents.
An additional 221 individuals have also been hospitalized from the virus, according to the latest report.
Florida provided 107,377 test results on Friday, of which 8,599 were positive, making for a positivity rate of 7.41% — higher than the previous two days, where it came in around 6.7%. Health officials consider the spread of the virus under control so long as positivity rates remain below 10%.
The Sunshine State is so far leading the country in variant spread, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Florida has reached 500 cases of the mutated virus strain B.1.1.7 — nearly a quarter of the 2,102 cases nationwide across 45 states. Michigan is the closest behind with 336 cases.
The good news: the state is nearing 3 million people vaccinated with at least a first-dose, according to the latest vaccination data. Florida has administered vaccines to 2,973,782 individuals, 1,642,800 (more than half) of whom have completed the two-dose vaccination series.
On Friday alone, the state recorded 56,718 vaccinations.
More vaccines may soon be on their way after the House passage of the American Rescue Plan early Saturday morning. However, the plan still has to make its way through the Senate before any relief can reach residents.
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.
