COVID-19 cases in Florida edge closer to 1 million

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ Florida reported 7,363 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, pushing the state's pandemic total closer to 1 million.

The state's total tally of coronavirus cases now stands at 992,660.

The Florida Department of Health also reported another 59 deaths over the past 24 hours. All together, 18,736 people have died from the coronavirus since the pandemic began, including 236 nonresidents.

Most of the deaths happened in recent weeks but were just confirmed in the past day.

Since the pandemic began, 54,706 residents have been hospitalized for the disease in Florida.

On Sunday, the nation's top infectious disease expert warned of a possible new surge related to Thanksgiving travel _ on top of the surge in coronavirus cases we're already seeing in so many spots across the country.

The latest surge could be two or three weeks away, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on NBC's "Meet The Press."

It can sometimes take up to two weeks for a person infected with COVID-19 to develop symptoms, and some never do but spread the virus without knowing it.

"I don't want to frighten people except to say it's not too late at all for us to do something about this," Fauci said, stressing the need for wearing masks, social distancing and avoiding crowds.

COVID-19 cases and deaths have been climbing in recent weeks.

Overall, more than 13.3 million people have tested positive for COVID-19 across the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University's COVID-19 dashboard.

As of Sunday, more than 266,000 people have died in this country alone.

Worldwide, more than 62.5 million people have tested positive for COVID-19 and more than 1.45 million people have died from the highly infectious coronavirus. The U.S. has the highest number of deaths, with at least 266,534 as of 2:30 p.m. Sunday.

Public health experts say the virus is considered under control when the COVID-19 test positivity rate is under 5%. Florida exceeds 5% by both of its measures of assessing the rate for testing of residents.

In the first calculation, the state reported a daily positivity rate of 7.85% on Sunday, up from 7.13% the day before. This method of calculating positivity counts new infections only, but also counts repeat negative tests, which skews the figure downward.

According to the state, Sunday's new case numbers reflect the results of 103,131 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 97,760 results reported Saturday.

In the second calculation, which includes retests of people who were previously diagnosed, the statewide daily positivity rate is 10.06% based on the latest results for 103,131 residents. That's up from 8.98% the previous day.

The state's pandemic data report shows a total of 18,500 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 236 non-residents have died, bringing the total number of deaths in the state to 18,736.

Florida has the fourth-highest total of COVID-19 deaths among the states, behind New York, Texas and California, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Florida's death rate since the pandemic began ranks 14th in the nation at 86 deaths per 100,000 people, the CDC reports. That's higher than the national rate of 81 deaths per 100,000.

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