Jacob Ogles
Health officials in Florida on Friday again reported more than 5,000 new COVID-19 infections. The state suffered another 54 previously unreported deaths, though that number shows the human toll of the coronavirus on the decline.
A daily update from the Department of Health shows the state has recorded 1,999,257 positive tests for individuals infected with the virus. That’s up 5,140 cases since the Thursday report.
The total includes 1,962,360 Florida residents to test positive, and another 36,897 from out-of-state who were tested here.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday evening separately reported an uptick in mutated virus strains in Florida cases. Florida continues to report the highest number of infections of the B.1.1.7 variant first discovered in the U.K., with 882 of the 5,567 known cases nationwide occurring in the Sunshine State.
Florida also has detected 21 of 48 known cases of the P.1 strain that first surfaced in Brazil, far more than any other state.
Less prevalent here, there have been nine known cases of the B.1.351 strain, first seen in South Africa, out of 180 known cases nationwide.
As for fatal cases, Florida health officials now report 33,273 total pandemic-related deaths. That includes 32,651 Florida residents and another 622 who lived elsewhere, but died here.
Health officials added 121,657 test results to its database on Thursday, of which 7,726 came back positive for COVID-19. That’s 6.35% of all tests, with the positivity rate for just new cases among Florida residents coming in at 5.02%. Health officials consider the spread of the virus contained as long as positivity rates stay below 10%.
Florida officials also report that more than 7 million doses of vaccine have been administered. That means 4,710,033 individuals have received at least one shot of the three approved vaccines on that market.
Of those, 138,419 individuals received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Another 2,478,676 have completed a two-dose regimen of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, while 2,092,938 have received one shot of those vaccines but await a booster.
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.
