HOSPITALIZATIONS

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – As more people receive the COVID-19 vaccine, new cases and hospitalizations are down across the Northeast Florida area compared to the holiday season peak. It’s promising as the country works toward herd immunity, but doctors say the problems are far from over. That’s a dip from 259 a week ago and dramatically lower than the Jan. 12 peak of 566 coronavirus patients. This comes as more seniors and frontline medical workers are getting vaccine shots. He’s noticing fewer people are quarantining or getting tested after exposure and some with symptoms aren’t getting tested, which in turn means they don’t register as a confirmed infection.

It took him four days to be able to get a test, for which he paid $150. He shared his positive result with his staff, encouraging them all to get tested, too. For some of them, however, it took two weeks to get tested and receive results, preventing them from working. The experience convinced Sanchez to pivot his business for the second time since March and to reopen the two Moe’s restaurants Dec. 2 as COVID-19 testing sites.

“It’s likely too early for us to have yet seen the bulk of Thanksgiving-related hospitalizations. We’re now in our 11th day since Thanksgiving and we are four days out from Hanukkah and 18 days from Christmas, 19 days from Kwanzaa, 24 from New Year’s Eve,” Pritzker said Monday. “These next four weeks may be the most crucial month of this entire pandemic. We quite literally have very limited leeway in our hospital systems to manage another surge.”

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Two hundred eleven people in Duval County were in the hospital with the coronavirus as of Monday afternoon. In the last two weeks, that number has increased, and health officials are expecting it to go even higher. Area hospitals said they are watching the number of cases increase, though not as high as they were in July. Doctors told News4Jax they are expecting another wave of cases in Jacksonville, as well as across Florida. Dr. David Caro, disaster medical director at UF Health, said they are thinking ahead.

The data has limitations, however. Contact tracers aren’t able to reach everyone who tests positive, especially as cases spike, and the health departments in Chicago and Cook County, which have the highest number of cases, aren’t anywhere near meeting the state-set goal of reaching 90% of infected individuals. The city and county health departments are still working on hiring more contact tracers and integrating their data into the state system.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. Duval County hospitals were reporting a total of 548 hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients, 113 of whom were in intensive care units, Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry said Tuesday. Local hospital CEOs have assured me if we experience a rise in COVID positive patients that threatens capacity, they are ready to take action and increase bed space and availability for patients, Curry said. So people need to be aware if they have an existing health issue, they need to take additional behavior and action to protect themselves. There were seven additional coronavirus-related deaths reported Tuesday in Northeast Florida. Clay County has now had 39 deaths from COVID-19.