As new coronavirus infections continue to drop across Florida, the state's death toll ramped up for the second week in a row, however not as quick as last year's summertime surge. On Friday, state health officials reported that Florida logged 288,638 COVID-19 infections this week, that's a big drop from last week, but its still 32 times higher than then in mid-November when it comes to new cases. The total case count here in Florida stands at 5,280,903, according to the latest state numbers, more than 1 million of those came since Dec. 31.

You may remember, the Florida Department of Health switched from daily to weekly published reports of case numbers back on June 4, but still sends data daily to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state also no longer publicly reports how many people COVID-19 has killed in Florida's counties, but still sends data to federal officials. The new data from the state also shows, the effects of the omicron variant has been milder than delta, partly because millions more Florida residents are vaccinated now than five months ago. However, unvaccinated COVID-19 patients continue to fill hospital beds around the state.