Florida's covid-19 total surpasses the million mark with 8,847 new cases

MIAMI — Florida has now confirmed more than 1 million cases of covid-19.

The state hit the milestone Tuesday when the Florida Department of Health confirmed 8,847 additional cases of the novel coronavirus, bringing the state’s known total to 1,008,166.

That makes Florida the third state in the country to record 1 million cases since the pandemic began in March, according to the New York Times covid-19 Database. The other two states are Texas and California.

Florida also announced 82 covid-19-related resident deaths, bringing the resident toll to 18,679. It is still unclear if there were any new nonresident deaths. On Monday, the cumulative nonresident toll was 237.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday the state was not considering any further restrictions on businesses. He went on to say that closing schools in March because of covid-19 concern was the “biggest public health blunder in modern American history.”

The Department of Education also released an emergency order Monday that keeps live, remote classes available as an option for the second semester of classes.

In Miami-Dade County, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said she tested positive for covid-19 and is experiencing mild symptoms.

“It’s like a cold so far,” she said. “Yesterday afternoon, I started coughing. Then it progressed to sneezing and a runny nose. I looked up the symptoms. As I’ve been telling people, in this day and age it’s covid until proven otherwise.”

One of the tools that officials rely on to determine whether the coronavirus situation is improving in the state is hospitalization data. Unlike testing, which might be limited or takes days to report results, hospitalizations can help give officials a real-time snapshot of how many people are severely ill with covid-19.

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration reports the number of patients hospitalized statewide with a “primary diagnosis of covid.” The data, which is updated at least every hour, does not distinguish between the number of covid-19 patients in hospital intensive care units and those in acute-care beds, which require less attention from nurses.

Previously, the state was providing only the total number of hospitalizations in its statewide and county-level data. Miami-Dade was an exception, with hospitals self-reporting a number of key metrics, including hospitalizations, to the county, which has made this data public for several months.

As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, there were 4,279 covid-19 patients admitted into hospitals throughout the state, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration dashboard. This is a big jump from what the state was reporting last month though it’s still less than early August, when more than 5,000 covid-19 patients were admitted into hospitals throughout the state.

Of Tuesday’s hospitalizations, 677 were in Miami-Dade, 438 in Broward, 292 in Palm Beach and seven in Monroe, according to the agency.

The state has had a total of 55,197 Florida residents hospitalized for covid-19-related complications, according to Florida’s covid-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard.

Testing in Florida has seen steady growth since the covid-19 crisis began.

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.

Epidemiologists use the testing data to create a positivity rate. The rate helps them determine if a rise in cases is because of an increase in testing or whether there’s increased transmission of the virus in the community.

On Tuesday, Florida’s Department of Health reported the results of 111,627 people tested on Monday. The positivity rate of new cases (people who tested positive for the first time) increased from 8.38% to 8.69%.

If retests are included — people who have tested positive once and are being tested for a second time — the positivity rate decreased from 10.99% to 10.50%, according to the report.