Florida Health Authorities Report 18,828 New Covid 19 Cases

Florida Health Authorities have reported an increase of 1,067 COVID-19 deaths from the number the state was reported Friday. The state reported 18,828 new cases since Friday. Later  CDC reported zero new cases for Sunday, so that total may be incomplete.

The new cases have raised the total number of cases in the state to 3,503,976 cases and 51,884 fatalities connected to COVID-19. The CDC reports daily data from the Florida Department of Health, which only publicly puts out a full report of its metrics weekly on Fridays. The deaths are often delayed being reported and then backdated to the day when they happened, so that increase of 1,000+ fatalities since Friday doesn’t mean that those deaths happened over the weekend.

Last week the state reported just shy of 75,906 new cases, half as many as the 150,000+ new cases that had been reported for three consecutive weeks in August. The state’s new-case positivity rate dipped to 11.2% in Friday’s weekly data from the Florida Department of Health. It had been over 20% in early August. Florida Health Authorities also reported a decrease in hospitalization. There were 8,488 patients admitted with COVID-19 on Monday.

President Joe Biden’s recent push to encourage more people to get the COVID-19 vaccine has failed to move the needle much locally or statewide so far. The figure was 2,407 during the week of Sept. 10 to Sept. 16. That’s less than one-third of what it was during the week of July 30 to Aug. 5, when 7,610 people in Brevard got their first shot.