Jacob Ogles
For the second day in a row, Florida on Friday reported more than 6,000 new COVID-19 cases over a 24-hour period. But more than 6 million in Florida have been vaccinated, providing reason for optimism despite the slight uptick in cases.
The Department of Health in its daily update shows the total number of positive cases in Florida since the start of the pandemic has grown to 2,071,015. That number, which covers more than 13 months of testing, includes 2,032,387 Florida residents and 38,628 who tested positive while here.
It’s a leap of nearly 6.490 cases since Thursday’s report.
Florida also added another 96 COVID-19-related deaths to its state database, bringing total fatal outcomes to 34,239. That includes 33,586 Florida residents who died after contracting the virus and never recovered, as well as 654 from out-of-state who died while being treated in the state.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday updated its national database on infections with various strains, but like last Thursday did not update its Florida totals. The federal agency still lists 2,351 cases of the B.1.1.7 mutation, 55 instances of the P.1 variant and 16 cases of the B.1.351 strain in Florida. For the first two strains, Florida far exceeds the cases for any state in the union. The last update for Florida data came Tuesday evening but numbers are supposed to be updated each Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.
The state did update its report on vaccinations, and now shows 6,091,034 individuals have received at least one dose of vaccine. That’s an increase of 111,573 people since midday Thursday.
More than half of those individuals are considered fully vaccinated. A total of 249,373 received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, while another 3,252,227 have had both required shots of the Pfizer of Moderna vaccines. Another 2,589,434 had a first shot of Pfizer of Moderna and await a second.
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.
