South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)

Hospitals see first results of virus surge

- By David Fleshler

South Florida hospitals are experienci­ng the impact of a surge in COVID-19 infections, and experts say it will only get worse.

Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties sawa 44% increase in coronaviru­s patients over the past twoweeks, an increase paralleled across Florida, according to state figures.

With about 3,200 Floridians currently hospitaliz­ed with COVID-19, the numbers are well belowthe July peak, when hospitaliz­ation stopped 9,000. But the trend is clearly upward, and question is how high it will rise.

Hospitals still have ample space, staff and supplies, and say they are far better prepared than in the early days of the pandemic. What’s not known is how many more patients they’ll have to treat, and whether we’re at the beginning of a moderate increase or a catastroph­ic one.

“The number of cases,

hospitaliz­ations, ICU admissions and death are all going to climb for the next two weeks because of what has already transpired in terms of transmissi­on,” said Dr. Aileen Marty, an infectious disease expert at Florida Internatio­nal University’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, who advised Miami-Dade County on the issue, in an email.

“However, what happens NEXT depends on the actions we take NOW. Ifwe don’t buckle up and start performing the necessary public health measures, we could see a climb WORSE than the one before. If we do, we can nip this inthe bud.”

The number of COVID-19 patients hospitaliz­ed statewide has gone from 2,297 on Oct. 31 to 3,151 Saturday, according to figures from the Florida Agency on Healthcare Administra­tion. Palm Beach County rose from146 to 227, Broward from222 to 300, and Miami-Dade from 304to440.

“I do see a spike,” said Vicky Perez, director of critical care at Jackson North Medical Center in North Miami Beach, which has 126 COVID-19 patients. “The ER is seeing many more patients.

My numbers in ICU have increased more than 50% since Monday. I was averaging two to three a day, and on Monday we spiked up to seven, and I currently have eight.”

Although Jackon North’s numbers don’t yet approach those experience­d April, when there were 485 patients, the current surge has just begun.

Perez said the hospital is better prepared, having taken in necessary supplies and learned more about how to treat the disease.

“We are much better than at the beginning,” she said. “We know what we’re dealing with, we know what to expect. We’re testing all the patients. We have more than enough PPE. The staff knows what to expect, the patients know what to expect. We made accommodat­ions for extra units of ICU, we have extra ventilator­s, so we’re prepared.”

The rise in infection numbers prompted Sunrise Mayor Mike Ryan to email his fellow Broward mayors Friday to say a crisis was at hand and that state and federal authoritie­s needed to do far more to address it.

“I fear we are on a precipice of a very dramatic surge in South Florida, like we have been seeing across the United States,” hewrote.

“If these trends are accurate and ominous, where are our public health officials and our hospital systems? Why are they not sounding alarm bells in a very public manner?”

In an interview Saturday, he said he wasn’t calling for another shutdown. Instead, he said, we need sensible, scientific­ally valid policies such as mask mandates that can provide protection while allowing daily life to continue. This needs to be done statewide, he said, so we don’t have the “patchwork of public health policies that we had to endure in April and May.”

“We have to be smart about our economy,” hesaid. “There’s no question that mandatory mask policies work. We have to create a social compact where masks are not a political statement but are necessary to keep our economy open.”

Although no one knows how bad it will be, there’s little question that a surge has begun in South Florida.

The daily case count has been rising since mid- October, with the seven-day average increasing from just over 2,000aday to nearly6,000.

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