Florida reported more than 7,500 additional COVID-19 cases Tuesday, but the number is inflated by another case dump from a lab that was hoarding nearly 75,000 results, the health department says.
The Florida Department of Health and Florida Division of Emergency Management say that, under the direction of Gov. Ron DeSantis, they are cutting all ties with Quest Diagnostics “after Quest’s failure to follow Florida law and report all COVID-19 results in a timely manner.”
“Quest’s failure to report nearly 75,000 results dating back to April means most of the data in today’s upload — while it will have historical significance — will have little impact on the status of the pandemic today,” the state said in a news release.
The state is now up to 631,040 confirmed cases, 11,374 resident deaths and 38,859 hospitalizations attributed to the novel coronavirus since the start of the outbreak, according to the state’s dashboard. Another 147 nonresidents have died from COVID-19 in the state.
Those numbers reflect a day-over-day increase of 7,569 cases and 187 resident deaths.
Florida’s health department says that of those new cases, 3,870 were results older two weeks
“The law requires all COVID-19 results to be reported to DOH in a timely manner. To drop this much unusable and stale data is irresponsible,” DeSantis said in a statement. “I believe that Quest has abdicated their ability to perform a testing function in Florida that the people can be confident in. As such I am directing all executive agencies to sever their COVID-19 testing relationships with Quest effective immediately.”
Quest says that people tested were notified of their results, according to the state, despite those results not being reported for data purposes.
Quest is a national lab headquartered in New Jersey. Last month, the state reported a smaller dump of historical testing data from a lab in Miami Gardens that skewed that day’s numbers.
Quest released a statement Tuesday that read in part:
“Due to a technical issue, our reporting of a subset of public health COVID-19 test data to the Florida Department of Health was delayed. This subset involves nearly 75,000 of the approximately 1.4 million COVID-19 tests we had performed and reported to the state. We apologize for this matter and regret the challenge it poses for public health authorities in Florida. The issue has since been resolved.”
Quest went on to say that it has provided more COVID-19 testing for Floridians than any other lab and hopes to continue working with the state.
The state says that without the backlog of Quest results, the positivity rate for new cases processed yesterday is 5.9%. With the Quest results, that number is 6.8%.
Florida continues to see encouraging trends in those positivity rates, and on Monday morning the state reported 1,885 new cases of COVID-19, the lowest daily increase since June 15.
County by county
MIAMI-DADE
Cases: 159,059 (+2,149)
Deaths: 2,537 (+100)
BROWARD
Cases: 72,245 (+1,124)
Deaths: 1,187 (+3)
MONROE
Cases: 1,743 (+9)
Deaths: 16 (unchanged)
PALM BEACH
Cases: 42,387 (+422)
Deaths: 1,128 (+9)
For more detailed data on every county from the latest Florida Department of Health report, click here.
Latest totals
The United States has passed 6 million confirmed cases, with over 183,000 deaths from COVID-19, the highest numbers in the world. Over 2.1 million Americans have been deemed recovered, according to data compiled from various sources by Johns Hopkins University.
Worldwide, the number of COVID-19 cases reported has surpassed 25.5 million. There have been more than 852,000 deaths worldwide attributed to the pandemic, with over 16.8 million being declared recovered.
Florida’s daily new cases have trended as follows:
- Tuesday: 7,569* (includes a data backlog)
- Aug. 31: 1,885
- Aug. 30: 2,583
- Aug. 29: 3,197
- Aug. 28: 3,815
- Aug. 27: 3,269
- Aug. 26: 3,220
- Aug. 25: 2,673
- Aug. 24: 2,258
- Aug. 23: 2,974
- Aug. 22: 4,311
- Aug. 21: 4,684
- Aug. 20: 4,555
- Aug. 19: 4,115
- Aug. 18: 3,838
- Aug. 17: 2,678
- Aug. 16: 3,779
- Aug. 15: 6,532
- Aug. 14: 6,148
- Aug. 13: 6,236
- Aug. 12: 8,109* (includes a data backlog)
- Aug. 11: 5,831
- Aug. 10: 4,155
- Aug. 9: 6,229
- Aug. 8: 8,502
- Aug. 7: 7,686
- Aug. 6: 7,650
- Aug. 5: 5,409
- Aug. 4: 5,446
- Aug. 3: 4,752
- Aug. 2: 7,104
- Aug. 1: 9,642
- July 31: 9,007
- July 30: 9,956
- July 29: 9,446
- July 28: 9,230
- July 27: 8,892
- July 26: 9,344
- July 25: 12,199
- July 24: 12,444
- July 23: 10,249
- July 22: 9,785
- July 21: 9,440
- July 20: 10,347
- July 19: 12,478
- July 18: 10,328
- July 17: 11,466
- July 16: 13,965
- July 15: 10,181
- July 14: 9,194
- July 13: 12,624
- July 12: 15,300
- July 11: 10,360
- July 10: 11,433
- July 9: 8,935
- July 8: 9,989
- July 7: 7,347
- July 6: 6,336
- July 5: 10,059
- July 4: 11,458
- July 3: 9,488
- July 2: 10,109
- July 1: 6,563
- June 30: 6,093
- June 29: 5,266
- June 28: 8,530
- June 27: 9,585
- June 26: 8,942
- June 25: 5,004
- June 24: 5,511
- June 23: 3,289
- June 22: 2,926
- June 21: 3,494
- June 20: 4,049
- June 19: 3,822
- June 18: 3,207
- June 17: 2,610
- June 16: 2,783
- June 15: 1,758
- June 14: 2,016
- June 13: 2,581
- June 12: 1,902
- June 11: 1,698
- June 10: 1,371
- June 9: 1,096