Florida COVID update: 2,571 cases added, hospital patients on the decline

Florida reported 2,571 COVID-19 cases and no new deaths on Tuesday, according to Wednesday’s report to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on Miami Herald calculations of CDC data.

The Florida Department of Health will most likely add more deaths to Tuesday’s total, increasing it from zero. The state has done this in the past when it has added cases and deaths to previous days during the pandemic.

The last time the state saw no increase consistently, without backlogged deaths added later, was in early March of last year during the nascent days of the pandemic, according to CDC data supplied by the state.

In all, Florida has recorded at least 3,630,835 confirmed COVID cases and 58,143 deaths.

In the past seven days, on average, the state has added 120 deaths and 2,366 cases per day, according to Herald calculations of CDC data.

FLORIDA COVID VACCINE RATES

About 12,675,668 eligible Floridians — 59% of the state’s population — had completed the two-dose series of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines or have completed Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

VACCINATIONS IN SOUTH FLORIDA AND MANATEE COUNTY

Here’s how many people have been fully vaccinated in South Florida, according to the CDC.

▪ In Miami-Dade County, about 2,027,846 people, or 74.6% of the county’s total population, are fully vaccinated.

▪ In Broward County, about 1,225,967 people are fully vaccinated, or 62.8% of the county’s population.

▪ In Palm Beach County, about 890,996 people are fully vaccinated, or 59.5% of the county’s population.

▪ In Monroe County, about 51,450 people are fully vaccinated, or 69.3% of the county’s population.

▪ In Manatee County, about 221,872 people are fully vaccinated, or 55% of the county’s population.

COVID-19 hospitalizations in Florida

There were 2,730 people hospitalized for COVID-19 in Florida, according to a Wednesday report by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, which compiled data from 233 Florida hospitals. The number of hospitalized COVID patients dropped by 122 from Tuesday’s report, when 232 hospitals submitted data. This continues a trend of decreasing hospitalizations.

COVID-19 patients take up 5.09% of all inpatient beds in the latest report’s hospitals, compared to 5.33% in the previous day’s reporting hospitals.

Of the people hospitalized in Florida, 740 people were in intensive care unit beds, a decrease of 48. That represents about 11.81% of the state’s ICU hospital beds, the same from the previous day.

Wednesday’s Miami-Dade County report said there were 303 COVID patients in the county’s hospitals on Tuesday, a decrease of 30 from the previous day’s report. Of the 33 new COVID patients, 28 (84.85%) had not been vaccinated.

Broward County’s Wednesday report said there were 269 COVID patients in the county’s hospitals, a decrease of six from yesterday’s report.