MIAMI — Florida’s Department of Health on Tuesday confirmed 542 additional cases of COVID-19, bringing the state total of confirmed cases to 37,439. There were also 72 new deaths announced, bringing the statewide death toll to 1,471.
One of the deaths included in Tuesday’s count is 41-year-old Nikima Thompson, a 911 dispatcher and a mother of four who worked for the Broward Sheriff’s Office for more than 15 years. She died late Monday after fighting the disease for more than a month.
Tuesday’s daily total of newly confirmed cases is the lowest the state has seen since Thursday.
However, Tuesday’s overnight death count is tied with April 14 as the second highest number of deaths announced since the state’s health department began providing updates about the COVID-19 pandemic.
Florida’s highest number of deaths recorded in a single day was April 28 with 83 deaths.
More than half of the new cases and deaths were in South Florida.
— Miami-Dade County saw 132 additional confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 29 new deaths, pushing the county’s death toll past 400. The county’s known total of cases is now at 13,224. The death toll is at 407, the highest in the state.
— Broward County reported 109 additional confirmed cases of COVID-19 and seven new deaths. The county’s confirmed total is now at 5,492. The death toll is at 215.
— Palm Beach County saw 79 additional confirmed cases of COVID-19 and nine new deaths. The county’s known total is now at 3,390. The death toll is at 205.
— Monroe County did not report any additional confirmed cases of the disease or any new deaths. The Florida Keys have a total of 80 confirmed cases and three deaths.
The number of deaths being reported by the state Department of Health may be incomplete. The list of coronavirus deaths being compiled by Florida’s medical examiners has shown the death count was up to 10% higher than what the Florida Department of Health has released.
Here’s a breakdown on what you need to know:
More than half of the known COVID-19 cases are in South Florida’s four counties: Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe. Miami-Dade continues to lead the state with the most confirmed cases and deaths. It has 13,224 known cases and 407 deaths.
Despite the daily reports of new cases and deaths, local and state officials have previously said that decreases in the daily total of reported cases are signs that social distancing measures are working.
Officials are also relying on hospitalization data. Unlike testing, which might be limited or take days to report results, hospitalizations can help give officials a real-time visual of how many people are severely ill with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
The health department says it doesn’t “have a figure” to reflect the number of people currently hospitalized and only provides the total number of hospitalizations in its statewide and county-level data. But hospitals in Miami-Dade are self-reporting a number of key metrics, including hospitalizations, to the county. Some provide updates every day and others don’t.
Hospitalizations in Miami-Dade have leveled off at about 650 to 700 a day for about two weeks. While officials haven’t seen a decline in hospitalizations for a prolonged period yet, they say the stabilization is a good sign.
But because scientists are still working to learn more about the virus, including how many people in the community are actually infected with the disease and have mild or no symptoms, it’s difficult to determine what percentage of the cases hospitalizations represent.
Testing in Florida has seen a steady growth since the COVID-19 crisis began, but less than 2% of the population has been tested for the disease, according to a Miami Herald analysis.
Testing, like hospitalizations, helps officials determine the virus’s progress and plays a role in deciding whether it is safe to lift stay-at-home orders and loosen restrictions.
And based on the Herald’s analysis, the state is significantly behind the number of tests experts recommend is needed to safely reopen restaurants, movie theaters and other businesses.
The recommended numbers of daily tests needed varies by experts but the dean of the University of South Florida’s College of Medicine told the governor last week that Florida needs to test about 33,000 people every day.
The state reached its recommended mark for the first time Saturday, with 33,597 new tests, but has fallen several thousands short of it since then.
Suddenly on Tuesday, the state reported 37,544 new tests, which was a nearly 10,000 increase from Monday. In total, 466,288 tests have been conducted. Of those, 428,252 were negative and 37,439 were positive, or 8.03%. The state says there are 1,265 pending tests.
Florida has seen a steady decline in the percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 since the outbreak began.
But health experts told the Herald last month they were concerned the number of pending COVID-19 tests listed by the state is an undercount because Florida reports only the number of Floridians waiting to get test results from state labs, not private ones — and private labs are completing more than 90% of state tests.
Previously, it has taken as long as two weeks for the results of pending tests from private labs to be added into the state’s official count, making it difficult for officials to project the size and scale of the pandemic in the state. It’s unclear how quickly results are currently being sent to the state from private labs.
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