What to Know
- Florida reported 148 new coronavirus-related deaths Thursday, as the total number of resident deaths approached 9,000
- The state also reported more than 6,200 new COVID-19 cases
- Thursday’s report comes a day after the state report’s data was skewed by a data dump
Confirmations of coronavirus deaths of Florida residents continued to slow Thursday, as the state reported 148 deaths and added 6,236 new cases, according to the state Department of Health.
The state now has 557,137 COVID-19 cases, along with 8,913 resident deaths and 134 non-resident deaths dating back to March. Thursday's increase in deaths of 148 residents is the 14th largest jump on record, and the seven-day average continues to decline, as well.
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Hospitalizations increased by 590 over the previous day, the fourth largest increase, fueling in part the second-highest seven-day average for hospitalizations of 487 per day.
The percentage of all tests reported Thursday that came back positive was at 13.86%. When retests of those already positivity are excluded, the new case rate was 9.52%.
Both are slightly higher than recent seven-day positivity rates, which have stabilized at around 13% for all tests and 9.5% for new cases.
Thursday’s report comes a day after the state report’s data was skewed by a data dump.
In the report released Wednesday, positivity rates and new case test results were inflated by a Miami Gardens lab reporting seven weeks of data all at once.
Their more than 14,000 tests reflected a 31% positivity rate, which artificially drove up the Tuesday’s statewide rate by more than three percentage points.
But the failure of Niznik Lab Corp to resolve what it said were “data integration issues” over those seven weeks had no appreciable effect on the state’s 15% positivity rate over that time period, because its tests make up a small fraction of the millions of results produced by labs over that period.
It did, however, add more than 4,400 new cases to the state total Tuesday. Had they been evenly reported on the days results were received they would have added an average of fewer than 100 cases a day over the seven missing weeks — again having no significant effect on each day’s positivity rate.
With the latest report, Miami-Dade had 140,984 cases, more than 1,600 more than were reported Wednesday, while Broward had 64,741 cases, an increase of more than 600.
Miami-Dade also had 1,954 coronavirus-related deaths, 15 more than were reported Wednesday, while Broward's total of 883 was 24 more than Wednesday.
Palm Beach County had 38,208 cases and 964 deaths, while Monroe had 1,577 cases and 13 deaths.
