Jacob Ogles
Florida once again reported upward of 5,000 COVID-19 infections over a 24-hour period. The Department of Health on Wednesday also confirmed 89 pandemic-related deaths.
A daily update from the state shows a total of 2,057,735 individuals have tested positive for the novel coronavirus in Florida since it surfaced in the state last March. That’s an increase of 5,294 reported cases since the Tuesday report.
Included in that total are 2,019,500 Florida residents, along with 38,235 out-of-state residents tested here.
Also in the total are 34,072 who died before they could recover from the virus, including 33,425 Florida residents and 647 visitors.
It’s the second day in a row Florida reported more than 5,000 new cases, and five days last week the same threshold as national leaders sound alarms on an increased weekly case load.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows Florida has particular reason for concern because it leads to nation in variant strains of the virus.
The highly contagious B.1.1.7 mutation, first seen in the U.K., has shown up in 2,351 Florida cases, according to a Tuesday evening update. That’s more than 20% of the 11,569 known cases nationwide and nearly double the cases for the strain found in the next closest state, Michigan, with 1,237 cases.
Florida has also seen 49 of the 172 instances of the P.1 variant, which first surfaced in Brazil.
The state hasn’t seen such a high prevalence of the B.1.351 mutation discovered in South Africa, with just 15 of the 312 known cases in the U.S.
On a brighter note, Florida officials have now administered vaccines to 5,871,740 people. That’s roughly 27.3% of the state’s population, though early on the state did allow non-residents to receive shots.
The total includes 234,962 individuals who took the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, as well as 3,072,361 fully vaccinated with the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Another 2,562,417 have received the first shot of Moderna or Pfizer and 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.
