Florida has broken its previous records for current hospitalisations set more than a year ago before vaccines were available. According to the data reported to the US Department of Health & Human Services, the Sunshine State had 10,207 people hospitalised with confirmed COVID-19 cases
The previous record was from July 23, 2020, more than a half-year before vaccinations started becoming widespread, when Florida had 10,170 hospitalisations, according to the Florida Hospital Association.
In per capita hospitalisations for COVID-19 Florida is currently leading the nation, as hospitals around the state report having to put emergency room visitors in beds in hallways and others document a obvious drop in the age of patients.
According to Jason Salemi, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida, it has seen an averaged 525 adult hospitalisations a day and 35 daily pediatric hospitalisations in the past week while both are the highest per capita rate in the nation.
It has been reported that new cases have come ad the hospitalisations are increasing, more transmittable delta variant has spread throughout Florida, and residents have returned to pre-pandemic activities.
“The recent rise is both striking and not-at-all surprising,” Salemi said in an email late Saturday.
According to the Federal health data released Saturday showed that Florida reported 21,683 new cases of COVID-19, the state’s highest one-day total since the start of the pandemic. The figures show how quickly the number of cases is rising in the Sunshine State: only a day earlier, Florida reported 17,093 new daily cases.
On Friday the latest numbers were recorded and released on Saturday on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website. However, mandatory mask mandates and vaccine requirements have been resisted by Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis along with the state Legislature that has limited local officials’ ability to impose limitations meant to stop the spread of coronavirus.
Requiring students to wear masks when classes resume next month has been banded in school districts by DeSantis on Friday.
Meanwhile, Florida’s Democratic agriculture commissioner, Nikki Fried, who is seeking to run against DeSantis for governor, on Sunday urged unvaccinated Floridians to get the shots.
“We are already behind the curve and in a worse spot every time the numbers come out,” Fried said at a news conference in Tallahassee. “This surge is and will impact every single one of us.”
There has been a spike rise in the number of COVID-19 infections in children with the virus at hospitals in Miami and most of them are requiring intensive care support. Memorial Health’s Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood had seven patients with COVID-19. Dr. Marcos Mestre, vice president and chief medical officer, told the Miami Herald that at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami, there were 17 patients with COVID-19 on Friday, including six in the ICU and one who needed a ventilator.
Mestre said, about half of the patients were under 12, and the rest were older and eligible for the vaccine. But none of the patients with COVID-19 at Nicklaus Children’s on Friday were vaccinated.
Most children who get COVID-19 do not need hospitalisation, Mestre said. In the state capital, COVID-19 hospitalisations reached 70 patients on Sunday at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, a jump of 11 people in two days.
