What is going to happen - - 48 Florida Hospitals, as of July 7th, have reached full capacity as the cases of COVID-19 are surging?

VA hospitals have been on standby from the time pandemic was declared. They can take civilians who need hospitalization, but that has to be determined before transfer. People will not be taken unless tested and referred.
An aside, I saw a room full of ventilators at my VA hospital last week as I checked in for an appointment. They were covered with plastic dust covers and ready to go.

I’m thinking possibly we are able to create another “ICU unit” in these hospitals and it isn’t as dire as it sounds. It’s not clear to me.

Here is a link that has updates for hospital capacity for Florida.
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/7572b118dc3c48d885d1c643c195314e/

Florida has plans for emergency situations from way before covid because of our hurricane susceptibility. We expand capacity and work together with hospitals to accommodate where the catastrophe is likely to be. I did hear about a week ago they were shifting patients to one of the hospitals in Dade in preparation. That might be routing rather than actually moving patients from one hospital to another.

Check out CDC site for an overview
https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/covid19/report-overview.html

Can’t speak for Fla, but in my state, hospitals have opened up for all procedures and ICU’s are being used for non Covid patients. There has been a “backlog” of elective procedures and hospitals are trying to make the money they missed during the emergency phase.

Florida had reopened for elective surgeries also, but I think some hospitals aren’t taking them now. There is an 80% full threshold where the hospitals have to stop taking elective surgeries, but I think they can juggle things.

I think the reporting doesn’t give the entire picture of the situation necessarily, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t cause for some concern. I think there is.

A friend of mine has a cousin in Arizona who works in a hospital and two weeks ago when she write on his Facebook they had 110 covid patients in a hospital with 600 beds and they had to stop elective surgeries at her hospital. Stopping elective surgeries meant her hours were cut (she needs the hours). I don’t think they were in a panic about caring for covid patients, but my guess is the hospital workers in ICU are under a lot of stress.

Yet they just ordered that all schools must reopen in the fall.

“All school boards and charter school governing boards must open brick and mortar schools at least five days per week for all students.”

@raum They are functioning under the belief that children don’t get as sick and don’t shed as much virus, so they don’t spread the virus as much as adults. They have been looking at other countries, and that day care was never closed in Florida, I assume other states had day care open also this entire time. Our camps are also allowed to be open this summer in Florida, I have no idea how many are open.

I assume no student is forced to go to in-person school. I heard that Orlando has massive numbers of students registering for online education, I don’t know if it is just elementary or K-12, it wasn’t clear to me in the report I saw. I assume other counties have a similar option.

To be clear, the Orlando program I speak of is not what happened for covid where teachers who usually teach in schools went to distance learning, this is a ten year old program developed specifically for home schooling that has the same curriculum as the school district and children are able to go at their own pace. The home school program has a completely separate registration. Honestly, I don’t see the whole state could not use Orlando’s online education if other parts of the state don’t have it. I can’t see why the curriculum would be so different that it wouldn’t suffice for all students. Home school parents can always add more courses if they want from a private program.

I’m not defending anything, just telling you what I see on local news.

If I had kids I would keep mine home if I could. I would wait for more information. I’m sure there are a lot of parents who will be putting their kids in school, just like their kids are in day care.

I wish we the public were given more information from the contact tracing being done. We find out about the over 150 people who are positive from the Orlando bar, but I want way more info than that. I want to know cases traced back to all sorts of places and activities.

@JLeslie they’ll contact if you have been with a positive case. They can’t give out a person name (HIPPA laws say so). I don’t understand “more information from the contract tracing.”

Trump will be opening up the Mar-a-Lago hotel for hospital services. As if.

Florida may have to ask for that hospital ship to sailed down the coast to Fort Lauderdale. It was in NY a couple months ago. It would make sense to bring it south.

There will be a lot of vacancies at senior care centers, at this rate. Thank Governor De Santis for his brilliance in planning.

What about the Republican convention? Bet they are glad they moved it to Jacksonville!

@Tropical_Willie I know they are contacting people, and I know they cannot break HIPPA, but I would love to know more info about where the cases are coming from. We hear the news stories or from our health officials about the super-spreader events, and I read an article recently about the cases in my grocery stores in my region for a particular grocery chain. I want more of that info. Since the beginning my state website says whether someone travelled and where for every single new positive case, but now travel is less of a factor. I wish it would say places the person had been also. supermarket, restaurants, swimming polls, parks, etc.

That’s the reason for contacting people that have been in contact with the positive cases not “well he/she was in Publix or Target on Tuesday.”

However in my state the are releasing on TV; the name of say a pizza shop and the day a person that worked there had tested positive.

@Tropic_Willie Yes, they want to know where people have been up to two weeks before they got sick. Stores, restaurants, doctors, etc etc. I’m not sure I’m following what you are saying.

I wish that was listed somewhere like they list where people traveled. Dates and places.

It works the other way around.

I swear the media tracks my Facebook.

So, I saw on the news today reporting from Florida and hospitals confirmed they can create addition ICU beds, but that they are obviously concerned about rising hospitalizations and stress on their staff, but they were not in a panic. We’ll see in a week how that’s going. I figure it will get really bad in some spots in Florida and around the country.

@JLeslie That’s what could happen, it helps if the have flexibility for beds!
I’ve got a family friend that is a RN in an ICU in New England. He comes home and collapses. He has watched a couple that that just passed right there. Staff and PPE maybe be the next shortages.

^^Staff has been a serious problem in very affected areas. They are physically overworked, some people are under baptism by fire, with little ICU experience, being borrowed from other floors, and psychologically the strain is very difficult, we definitely have had, and will have medical professionals suffering from great sorrow, depression, and PTSD. New York brought in nurses and doctors from other states. If you belong to View From My Window facebook group, lots of people posting in April and May from NYC who were there temporarily from other states to help out.

In other countries, people readily volunteer and contribute to contact tracing.

In America, people have to be issued subpoenas for refusing to cooperate with contact tracers after attending a superspreader event.

‘Merica!

@raum I think most people cooperate.

New hospitals MUST be created/

Although the UK has far less Covid cases than the US they have created dozens of hospital by taking over dozens of unused buildings and adapting them into hospitals.

In some cases this was done in just a few days. All these hospitals were named ‘Nightingale’ in memory of Florence Nightingale

Who going to staff these pop-up hospitals ? @Poseidon ?

Poseidon We aren’t at the pop-up hospital place yet. Florida had field hospitals being set up back in late March and April, but it’s very doubtful we will need such a thing (God willing). Hospitals can’t take elective surgeries when they reach 80% capacity, so the hospitals can expand ICU care, and they can reroute patients to hospitals with space.

I saw an interview with a Miami doctor and he said they are in “hurricane” mode.

It’s getting bad in some locations, I’m not saying it isn’t, these governors have to put in orders for people to curb their behavior. In Florida I would say we need the mayors to do it, because my governor seems unwilling.

@JLeslie GA except the mayors would have a hard time shutting down bars and other businesses if the Governor says they can stay open.

I don’t know what mechanism or law they could use.

The mayor would be sued in a New York second if they closed businesses.

@Tropical_Willie My Governor has gone along every time. Orange County (where Orlando is) put in a mask order weeks ago and started to pull licenses for restaurants and bars not following guidelines. Right now Miami-Dade is under a mask order and either the county, or it might be just the city of Miami, has a curfew again – 10pm, the governor supports it. I have not seen DeSantis go against a county or city order yet. He consistently says cities have problem spots can go stricter.

Other states have had the opposite I know. Texas I think is one of them.

Edit: Florida is very accustomed to having strict orders in only select counties. During hurricanes we do that. Evacuations, curfews, stay off the roads unless necessary, etc.