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Northeast Florida hospital officials are urging people to get vaccinated as COVID-19 patient numbers approach or exceed levels they have seen at the worst of the pandemic amid the spread ” creeping ‘of the more transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus.
UF Health Jacksonville, in Florida’s most populous city, has seen an “exponential” increase in the number of COVID-19 patients admitted in recent weeks, Chad Neilsen, director of infection prevention at the hospital told ABC News .
The previous record for the most daily COVID-19 patients on its two campuses – 125 – was set in January; the hospital passed that three days ago, Neilsen said, and is currently at 136, with around 40 people in the intensive care unit.
There were 75 COVID-19 patients in hospital last week, 45 the week before and 20 the week before, according to Dr. Leon Haley Jr., CEO of UF Health Jacksonville.
“We knew this was probably due to the delta variant taking a bigger footprint here in the northeastern Florida area because it was rising so quickly,” Nielsen said. “Everyone in town suffers the same fate as we do.”
At the Jacksonville Hospital of the Mayo Clinic, there has been a “significant” increase in hospitalizations for COVID-19 over the past three weeks, “approaching our previous peaks,” said Dr. Ken Thielen, CEO of the Mayo Clinic in Florida, during a COVID -19 media briefing Wednesday with Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry and other local health care leaders.
“This represents a five-fold increase in COVID hospitalizations, and follows several weeks where we only had a handful of hospitalized COVID patients,” Thielen said.
There are other similarities between hospitals in the region – the COVID-19 patients they admit are largely unvaccinated and they are younger than what they have seen before during the pandemic.
Of UF Health Jacksonville’s COVID-19 patients, 90% are unvaccinated and nearly 70% are between the ages of 40 and 69, Neilsen said. Before this increase, 75% of COVID-19 patients were aged 60 and over, he said.
“We are definitely seeing a shift towards a younger population,” he said.
According to Tom VanOsdol, president and CEO of Ascension Florida and Gulf Coast, which operates a hospital in Jacksonville, more than 96% of its COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated.
“Our median age of our inpatients is 49 – that was in the mid-1960s during previous waves of this pandemic,” VanOsdol said at Wednesday’s press conference. “So it’s a younger demographic that doesn’t get vaccinated that unfortunately contracts COVID, and these cases require hospitalization for treatment.”
At Baptist Health in Jacksonville, COVID-19 patients are “younger, sicker and getting sicker faster,” Chief Medical Officer Dr Timothy Groover said during the briefing.
Over the past month, 44% of COVID-19 patients in hospital were in their 40s or less, and “most were previously in good health,” he said.
As the delta variant quickly became the dominant variant spreading in the United States, Florida is one of four states reporting the highest weekly COVID-19 case rates per capita, with more than 200 cases per 100,000 residents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On Monday, the seven-day average of new cases rose 107.48% in Duval County, where Jacksonville is located, according to the CDC.
At the same time, less than half of the state’s residents are fully immunized, according to the CDC. Rates are lagging in Duval County, where 41% of residents are fully immunized.
“Vaccines are stagnant here in northeast Florida, and the delta variant is rampant among unvaccinated people,” Neilsen said.
Neilson attributes the latest increase in part to the rise in the delta coinciding with the July 4 rallies, but said it was difficult to predict where the hospitalizations might be heading “because they are spreading so quickly.”
Hospitals in the region are worried about burnout and staff shortages as the pandemic spreads and unvaccinated staff are exposed in the community and also fall ill.
“We face a real personnel crisis if this continues,” Nielsen said.
Health care officials in the region have urged people to get vaccinated if they haven’t already, and to continue wearing masks, social distancing and washing their hands.
Curry also urged residents to get vaccinated – but did not issue restrictions.
“The path to getting past the wave and preventing futures is increasing our percentage of vaccinations,” he said at Wednesday’s briefing. “The math is clear – vaccines work. Restrictions on our economy and our personal freedoms are not the answer. The answer is to get vaccinated.”
“Hospitals are full and busy with unvaccinated people, so the solution here is to get vaccinated,” he added.
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