Intensive care units at several hospitals in Central Florida were at full capacity on Monday, as the state reported more than 6,000 new cases of coronavirus and 47 deaths.
Orlando Health ORMC, Orlando Health Dr. P. Phillips Hospital, AdventHealth Kissimmee, AdventHealth Winter Park and Poinciana Medical Center had no ICU capacity, according to data from the Agency for Health Care Administration, which provides only a snapshot in time.
But the picture is more promising when all available ICU beds are averaged for each county: Orange County had 17% overall ICU bed availability, Lake had 17%, Osceola had 12% and Seminole had 10%.
“I know we always have a concern about beds and what is available in the county for our residents,” said Dr. Raul Pino, health officer at the Florida Department of Health in Orange County, during a press briefing on Monday. “Although we have seen an increase in the number of hospitalizations, the systems are reporting that they are not concerned about the need for surge yet as a system. It could be that a hospital has more cases than another and things have to reshuffled on readjust[ed].”
He said as of Monday morning, Orange County hospitals had 511 beds available, with 499 ventilators, 58 ICU beds for adults and 46 ICU beds for children.
In Orange County, 357 people were hospitalized for COVID-19 with 72 in intensive care, according to the Florida Department of Health in Orange County. On June 28, there were 164 hospitalizations with 35 in the ICU.
In Seminole County, 137 patients are being treated in the hospital for COVID-19, up from 110 patients on Thursday. Lake and Osceola county have not released any hospitalization data.
The region’s only sources of COVID-19 hospitalization data come from press conferences by Orange County officials and a dashboard by Seminole County.
The state announced last week that it was going to release COVID-19 hospitalization data, but it has yet to to do so. It only reports historical data on hospitalizations.
When asked about making Orange County hospitalization data public, Mayor Jerry Demings said that the hospitals are required to report the data to the Department of Health.
“They do share the data with me,” Demings said. “Verbally we have conversations several times a week about it as we endeavor to make decisions on behalf of the residents. I go to Dr. Pino and he shares with me what he sees in his dashboard on a daily basis.”
Hospitals have attributed some of the reduced capacity to their return to normal operations, including restarting elective procedures that were put on hold for several weeks. Central Florida hospitals say they have enough capacity even though the COVID-19 hospitalization numbers have been steadily increasing.
“We have sufficient supplies of ventilators, monitors and other specialized equipment in order to quickly convert spaces in the hospital to both standard and ICU level rooms,” an AdventHealth spokesman said on Monday.
“We did a significant amount of planning in March and April to identify areas that could be converted if needed,” the spokesman said. “AdventHealth also has an extensive health care system in place across Central Florida so that we can locate patients in the facility that best matches the level of care they need.”
Orlando Health did not respond on Monday to a request seeking comment. However, the health system on Friday said it is “carefully monitoring” patient volumes and can make adjustments if the COVID-19 caseload grows.
During a press briefing with Gov. Ron DeSantis at UF Health The Villages Hospital on Monday, officials said that UF Health continues to have enough capacity in its hospitals.
“I think there’s a lot of misconception in the general public. When you hear that, let’s just say our Gainesville campus is 90% full, that’s a good thing, because we’re usually closer to 100% full because we need to run fully to serve our community,” said Dr. David Nelson, president of UF Health, during a press briefing with Gov. Ron DeSantis at UF Health The Villages Hospital on Monday.
Hospitalizations across the state have been ticking upward, with nearly 1,700 patients admitted in the past seven days compared with 1,200 the previous week. Five hospitals in the St. Petersburg area were out of intensive care unit beds, officials said.
The situation has been more dire in South Florida.
Miami-Dade said it has more than 1,600 coronavirus patients now in the hospital, more than double from two weeks ago. Miami’s Baptist Hospital had only four of its 88 ICU beds available.
“If we continue to increase at the pace we have been, we won’t have enough ventilators, enough rooms,” said Dr. David De La Zerda, a respiratory specialist at Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital.
Miami-Dade, Florida’s largest county, is again closing its restaurants to sit-down dining, gyms and other indoor venues weeks after they reopened because the spike in coronavirus cases creating a shortage of ICU beds.
Meanwhile, DeSantis pointed out on Monday that the death rate from COVID-19 has been less than 2%, which is lower than other states. In Central Florida, Orange County’s death rate is much lower than the state average at 0.4%. The rate at Lake, Osceola and Seminole is 1%.
Health experts say that hospitalizations and deaths trail new cases by several weeks.
“I think we’re at that point where we may see more patients testing positive and there may even be more hospitalizations,” said said Dr. Marcia Katz, a pulmonologist and associate dean for Clinical Affairs at UCF College of Medicine. “But if the deaths start going up, that’s a big problem.”
From Sunday to Sunday, Florida reported 59,036 new cases, the most in a one-week period since the pandemic began. There are 375 new cases in Orange for a total of 14,407, 91 in Seminole for 3,430, 119 in Volusia for 2,804, 102 in Osceola for 3,068, and 45 in Lake for 1,890.
But Pino offered cautious optimism for Orange County on Monday. He said the recovery rate for the virus has improved, and so has the rate of infection per 100,000 people, which has dropped from 343 infections to 271 last week.
“Last week we saw a negative growth of 21% when you compare it with the prior week and that coincides with the second week that we have the mask ordinance in Orange County,” said Pino.
The average age of those who have tested positive for COVID-19 has gotten younger in Florida, compared with the beginning of the pandemic, a trend that officials contribute to better infection control at nursing homes.
On Monday DeSantis said that in places like Orange County, the median age of COVID-19 cases has dropped to people in their mid-30s.
“So the clinical consequences of that has been relatively mild,” DeSantis said.
Pino said 52% of the cases have been between 20 to 40 years old.
But seeing young COVID-19 patients in the hospital or intensive care is not uncommon for doctors.
“We still have patients that come in that are elderly or patients with comorbidity. They’re still affected by it. But from an overall perspective, half of our patients tend to be younger than 50, 55, which wasn’t that way before,” said Dr. Eduardo Oliveira, executive medical director for critical care services at AdventHealth. “And that’s why I would reiterate the issue that young people will get sick with this and very much sick.”
Although the majority of deaths in Central Florida are among those who are 65 years and older, two people in their mid-30s died from COVID-19 infection last week in Seminole County.
Tiffini Theisen and the Associated Press contributed to this story.
