FloridaPolitics.com
Staff Report
October 11, 2020
The Saturday Department of Health COVID-19 report will be delayed one day, according to the state.
The delay comes after DOH received approximately 400,000 COVID-19 test results from Helix Laboratory that had already been reported. Helix Laboratory is a private lab not affiliated with the state.
The report typically would have been made public Saturday late morning or early afternoon.
“The massive size of the data file and the need to de-duplicate hundreds of thousands of results prevented the Department of Health’s automatic reporting system from processing yesterday’s results as it normally does,” the state provided in a statement.
Epidemiologists with the state are currently working to reconcile the data, which they expect to take a day to finish and will be done in time for Sunday’s report.
The state noted the delay does not affect individuals from receiving their test results as the lab is responsible for notifying patients.
As of the most recent data available covering cases as of Friday morning, 728,921 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Florida, including 8,920 non-residents who tested positive in the state.
A total of 15,186 residents and 186 non-residents have died with the virus in the state while 45,675 have been hospitalized.
The state’s positive test rate for individuals who tested positive for the first time remains below 5% at 4.13% Thursday. Over the past two weeks in the most recent data, the positivity rate has only been above 5% on two days, 5.25% on Oct. 5 and 5.01% on Sept. 29. The lowest rate was on Oct. 3 at 3.74%