Polk County's COVID positivity rate reaches 23.4%

Gary White, The Ledger
·2 min read
4

The positivity rate for COVID-19 in Polk County remains high, even as new infections declined slightly in an update released Friday by the Florida Department of Health.

The positivity rate was 23.4% on testing from July 22 to 28, up slightly from the previous biweekly report. The department disclosed 2,808 new cases, a decline of 7.1% from two weeks earlier.

The positivity rate has been above 20%, an unusually high level, in three consecutive updates. The rate, which does not include results of home testing, had been as low as 2.9% in April.

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Statewide, infections dropped 6.4%, with the Department of Health registering 73,347 new cases. Florida’s positivity rate of 20.7% also showed a slight decline.

The CDC's county-by-county COVID tracker still shows Polk County with a high community spread with 425.51 cases per 100,000 population and 9.7% of available hospital beds occupied by COVID patients.
The CDC's county-by-county COVID tracker still shows Polk County with a high community spread with 425.51 cases per 100,000 population and 9.7% of available hospital beds occupied by COVID patients.

The department tallied another 903 COVID-related deaths, an increase from the July 15 update. Florida’s official cumulative death toll from COVID is now 77,565 since spring of 2020. The state does not report deaths by county of residence.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 10 deaths of Polk County residents related to COVID in the week ending Thursday, a drop of 23.1% from the previous week.

The CDC continues to list Polk County with high community levels of COVID-19, along with all but three of Florida’s 67 counties.

The CDC recorded 237 hospital admissions for COVID-19 patients in the week ending July 26, a slight increase from a week earlier. Patients confirmed to have COVID-19 occupied 9.7% of staffed, in-patient beds in Polk County hospitals, according to the CDC.

The CDC reported the positivity rate for Polk County at 22.8%, down slightly from a week earlier.

The CDC’s dashboard listed 71.6% of Polk County residents age 5 and older as having received at least one dose of a vaccine, with 61.7% fully vaccinated.

Among fully vaccinated residents, 40.4% have received at least one booster dose, according to the CDC.

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: COVID: Polk County's positivity rate rises even as new cases decline