Florida reports nearly 44K new COVID-19 cases over a week

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The number of COVID-19 cases and pandemic-related deaths continues to rise in Florida. Health officials in the state recorded 43,869 additional coronavirus cases over the course of the last week.

The Department of Health in a Tuesday daily update reported the total number of COVID-19 cases climbed to 2,178,783. That’s a jump of 5,645 cases since Monday.

The nearly 44,000 cases in a week represent more cases than in the first three and a half months after the virus first surfaced in Florida.

The total caseload includes 2,132,308 Florida patients who tested positive for the virus, as well as 40,830 out-of-state individuals tested while here.

The number also includes 32,209 individuals who died of complications from the virus. That total reflects an increase of 67 previously unreported deaths overnight. A total of 34,533 Florida residents have died from COVID-19-related causes, as have 676 individuals who lived outside of Florida but died here.

On Monday, Florida recorded results from 100,207 COVID-19 tests. Of those, 8,781 came back positive, or 8.76%. Health officials consider the spread of the virus under control if the positivity rate remains below 10%. The Department of Health says Florida’s daily positivity rate exceeded that threshold four times in the last two weeks, including on Saturday and Sunday.

Meanwhile, the latest numbers from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show Florida still has a higher number of cases of mutated coronavirus strains than any other state.

Of the 20,915 instances nationwide of the B.1.1.7 variant, first seen in the United Kingdom, a total of 3,510 cases were for patients in Florida. That’s about 16.8% of all cases nationwide.

For the P.1 variant, first seen in Brazil, 126 of the 497 cases nationwide were diagnosed in Florida.

Additionally, 27 cases of the B.1.351 mutation that first surfaced in South Africa have been diagnosed in Florida out of 453 cases across the country.

The good news is that 8,143,599 individuals have now been vaccinated. Of those, 5,199,978 are fully vaccinated, most with two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, but 528,721 of them with the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine before it was temporary pulled from use.

Another 2,943,621 had their first dose of Pfizer or Moderna and await a second prescribed dose.

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 non-residents 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.