TAMPA, Fla. — Almost nine months fighting the coronavirus pandemic, hospitals in Tampa Bay are gearing up for another spike in cases
"We are seeing more people come in as cases go up, as you would expect," Dr. Laura Arline, the Chief Quality Officer of BayCare Health System said.
Arline says doctors and staff are making sure the proper PPE and resources needed to treat patients are readily available now.
"There's quite a bit of difference between now and then. So while we don't have a ton of different treatments, we do have some things that we have in our toolbox to be able to use with some confidence for patients who have COVID-19," Arline said.
Data from the Agency for Health Care Administration shows 267 of 1,301 adult ICU beds are available in Tampa Bay. That's only 20.5 percent. When you break it down county by county, ICU beds are low.
Both Citrus and Highlands counties have less than 10 beds left.
But USF Health's Dr. Jill Roberts says our healthcare system isn't overwhelmed yet.
"We built up capacity during spring, right? So spring hospital care really got hit very, very hard. We know that there weren't enough people, there wasn't enough PPE, there weren't enough ventilators. So all of those supplies and equipment and things they've been beefed up," Roberts said.
Because of the lessons learned in spring, Roberts says our hospitals are ready.
"Our hospitals in the Tampa Bay area I think are probably pretty ready, but they will get overwhelmed quickly. So we don't want to continue this trend. As we're trending up, we want to stop this and actually start trending back down again," Roberts said.
With emergency plans in place and the capacity to expand COVID-19 units and resources, BayCare hospitals should be ready for the next wave of COVID-19 cases. But the concern from doctors hasn't gone away.
"To be honest with you, I am worried because I do see the peak happening. I don't want us to become lax in our safety protocols as members of our own community. So, meaning we still need to wear a mask, we need to wash our hands, just going back to the basics, we need to make sure that we're socially distancing because those things really work," Arline said.
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