MIAMI — Florida’s Department of Health on Wednesday confirmed 5,508 additional cases of COVID-19, setting another daily total record high since the start of the pandemic. The state now has a total of 109,014 confirmed cases.

Previously, the highest daily total of newly confirmed cases was on Saturday, with 4,049 cases. There were also 44 new deaths announced Wednesday, raising the statewide death toll to 3,281.

Less than half of the new cases were in South Florida. It is still unclear if any of the new deaths were in South Florida.

— Miami-Dade County reported 957 additional confirmed cases of COVID-19, bringing the county’s total to 27,779.

— Broward County reported 473 additional confirmed case of the disease, bringing the county’s known total to 12,217.

— Palm Beach County saw 356 additional confirmed cases, bringing the county’s known total to 11,536.

— Monroe County reported eight additional cases of the disease. The Florida Keys now have a total of 174 confirmed cases.

One of the tools that officials are relying on to determine if the coronavirus situation is improving in the state is hospitalization data. Unlike testing, which might be limited or take days to report results, hospitalizations can help give officials a real-time snapshot of how many people are severely ill with COVID-19.

The health department says it does not “have a figure” to reflect the number of people currently hospitalized and only provides the total number of hospitalizations in its statewide and county-level data. On Wednesday, 256 hospitalizations were added, bringing the statewide total to 13,574.

While Florida’s Department of Health is not releasing current statewide hospitalization data to the public, hospitals in Miami-Dade are self-reporting a number of key metrics, including hospitalizations, to the county, which has made this data public. Some provide updates every day; others don’t.

On Tuesday, Miami-Dade hospitalizations hit an alltime high for the second day in a row with 818 patients, according to Miami-Dade County’s “New Normal” dashboard data. According to Tuesday’s data, 108 people were discharged and 114 people were admitted.

While a record number of COVID-19 patients are filling Miami-Dade hospitals, with one medical center in Homestead reaching ICU capacity on Tuesday, hospitals countywide say they still have more beds available than beds filled with COVID-19 patients.

Hospital administrators say there is also a silver lining in the growing number of new cases and hospitalizations in Florida’s hardesthit county: The patients are younger and not as severely ill as they were during the first wave in April, and doctors and nurses have gained valuable experience in the months-long pandemic _ leading to shorter hospital stays and better outcomes.

Scientists are also still working to learn more about the virus, including how many people in the community are infected and have mild or no symptoms, which can make it difficult to determine what percentage of the cases hospitalizations represent.

Testing in Florida has seen steady growth since the COVID-19 crisis began.

Testing, like hospitalizations, helps officials determine the virus’ progress and plays a role in deciding whether it is safe to lift stay-at-home orders and loosen restrictions.

The recommended number of daily tests needed varies among experts, but the dean of the University of South Florida’s College of Medicine told the governor that Florida needs to test about 33,000 people every day.

Florida’s Department of Health reported 37,402 new tests on Monday in Tuesday’s daily COVID-19 update. The positive rate was 13.19% of the total, according to the report. In total, and 1,944,730 tests have been conducted.

To date, 1,641,863 people have been tested in Florida. Of the total tested, 103,506 (about 6.30%) have tested positive. The state says there are 1,449 tests with pending results.

Health experts have previously told the Miami Herald that they were concerned the number of pending results listed by the state is an undercount. This is because Florida’s Health Department only announces the number of pending test results from state labs, not private ones _ and private labs are completing more than 90% of state tests.

Previously, it has taken as long as two weeks for pending test results from private labs to be added into the state’s official count, making it difficult for officials to project the size and scale of the pandemic in the state. It’s unclear how quickly results are currently being sent to the state from private labs, as the turnaround time varies by lab.