Florida COVID-19 vaccinations reach more than 4M arms

Health officials on Friday delivered news of more than 5,200 newly detected coronavirus infections and more than 100 new deaths. But the state now reports more than 4 million individuals in Florida received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

A daily update on the pandemic reported 1,967,865 total positive tests for COVID-19 since the virus surfaced in Florida last March. That’s an increase of 5,214 infections from Thursday.

The total includes 1,931,613 Florida residents, as well as 36,252 individuals who tested positive while here.

A more grim update, the Department of Health overnight reported an additional 105 pandemic-related deaths, bringing the human toll of the virus in Florida to 32,744 people. That includes 32,145 who called the state home and another 599 who died here while visiting.

Florida health officials on Thursday input results from 125,748 coronavirus tests into its database. Of those, 7,969 were positive results, or 6.34%. Among only new cases with Florida residents, the positivity rate was just 4.88%. Health officials generally consider the spread of the virus to be contained if that rate stays below 10%.

At this point, 82,006 residents have ben hospitalized in the state at some point.

A Thursday evening update by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed little change in reports of variants of the coronavirus. The federal agency added just one more reported case of the B.1.1.7 strain, first discovered in the United Kingdom. But the 690 known cases in Florida still represent the bulk of the 3,701 known infections of the strain nationwide.

Instances of the B.1.351 strain, detected initially in South Africa, have reached 108 nationwide with only one case in Florida. Meanwhile, five of 17 instances nationwide of the P.1 mutations, first detected in Brazil, were found in Florida patients.

In better news, Florida health officials report 4,031,776 individuals to date have received at least one shot of one of three vaccines available in the U.S. That includes 52,624 who got the single dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and another 2,151,164 who have been fully vaccinated with two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Another 1,827,988 have already had one shot of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines and await a booster to finish the treatment.

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.