UF Health Medical Executives Express Concern Over Rising Child Death Rate From COVID

JACKSONVILLE, Florida – UF Health officials concluded a teleconference with local politicians on Tuesday, explaining to them where the city is with the COVID-19 pandemic, including local cases and how the virus is now affecting children.

At UF Health on Tuesday, 127 people were hospitalized with COVID-19, including 44 in intensive care. In Baptist’s five hospitals, 294 patients are being treated for COVID-19, 89 of whom are in intensive care. In the three Ascension St. Vincent hospitals, 225 patients are hospitalized with COVID-19, 97 of whom are in intensive care. At Flagler Health, 51 patients have COVID-19 including 13 in intensive care and eight on ventilators.

While the numbers appear to be dropping, intensive care units are still around 75% full. Currently, 17 UF Health patients are on ventilators and the average stay for a COVID-19 patient is nine days.

“We are better than a few weeks ago, but our cases remain stable and are not decreasing,” said Russ Armistead, CEO of UF Health Jacksonville. “We hope we don’t have another flare after the holidays.”

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The percentage of COVID-19 patients in hospital who are not vaccinated rose from the 1990s to 83% at UF Health, officials said.

Dr Mobeen Rathore, a leading infectious disease pediatrician at both UF Health and Wolfson Children’s Hospital, confirmed during Tuesday’s appeal that the death of a teenager in County St Johns was recently the result of COVID.

And he said some kids get really sick. On Tuesday, 14 children in Wolfson are being treated for COVID, including five in intensive care. On Monday, three new cases of children were admitted to hospital.

“The children are getting sick. The children are hospitalized. Children get sick and go to the intensive care unit to be intubated, to be on a ventilator and even on ECMO, which is a heart-lung machine, kind of a last ditch effort to support these children. Unfortunately, the children are dying. In fact, many of you have probably heard the news, there is a 17 year old kid who has passed away in St. Johns County just in the last few days, so I think we have to be very sure and understand. that children can get serious illness. And I can tell you that in the almost 18 months ending in June, we had three child deaths in our region. It’s a death every six months. And in July and August alone, we had four child deaths, which is two deaths per month. “

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Rathore said that in most cases children who get sick with COVID recover, those who end up in intensive care have serious heart and lung problems. They are damaged by the virus and, as we have learned, some do not survive.

“Protecting our children is the most important thing we can do,” said Rathore. “I hope future generations will remember us as people who protected their children and not as a group of people who put their children in danger.”