TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Florida moved past New Jersey this week to have the fourth-highest number of COVID-19 deaths in the country, according to totals posted Thursday on a Johns Hopkins University website that tracks national and international data.
The website showed Florida with 16,267 COVID-19 deaths, four more than New Jersey, as of Thursday.
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On Friday, Florida added another 73 deaths of residents in data released by the state health department, pushing the total to 16,340 resident deaths since March.
The Florida total does not include 204 non-residents who have died of COVID-19 in the state, according to numbers from the Florida Department of Health.
New York has had the most COVID-19 deaths, with 33,396, the Johns Hopkins website showed Friday. It was followed by Texas, with 17,659 deaths, and California, with 17,256 deaths.
The additional deaths Friday included one added in Baker County, which pushed the county’s total to 19 deaths since the pandemic began.
Florida reported another 3,689 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, maintaining a seven-day average in daily reported cases of about 3,300. That average is about 1,000 more per day from what the state was seeing at the beginning of the month.
Duval County added 270 cases Friday and has now reported 33,946 confirmed COVID-19 cases since March. Alachua County added 88 cases (9,895 total), St. Johns added 43 (6,193 total) and Clay added 31 (5,899 total). No other local county added more than 20 cases.
The rates of positive tests have been fluctuating in recent days, dropping from 5.59% statewide in Thursday’s data to 4.00% in Friday’s report.
Hospitalizations for the disease, however, have remained roughly stable over the past month, with between 2,000 and 2,200 being treated in Florida hospitals, according to a state online census of hospital beds.
Those figures compare with peaks of close to 10,000 in late July.
Friday’s added cases bring the state’s known total of COVID-19 cases to 771,780 since March.
Most Northeast Florida counties saw their positivity rates drop back below 5% in Friday’s report. Only Flagler, Baker and Union counties were over the 5% mark.