TAMPA, FL – Tampa Bay health professionals sound the alarm as the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus sweeps through the area and hospitals struggle to keep up with the rising patient counts due to this more virulent strain of the coronavirus.
Some hospital groups have already suspended elective procedures and operations in the face of the growing hospital count.
AdventHealth announced on Friday that it is postponing elective procedures that require overnight stays at its Wesley Chapel hospital starting Monday.
No other West Florida Division AdventHealth hospitals are currently affected.
AdventHealth said it will continue to perform same-day procedures that do not require an overnight stay at Wesley Chapel Hospital for the time being.
The hospital group said the decision will allow them to plan for increased hospital bed needs as coronavirus rates continue to rise in Florida due to the introduction of the Delta variant of the virus.
AdventHealth found that more than 90 percent of its patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in the health group’s nationwide system are unvaccinated.
“AdventHealth continues to see a significant increase in COVID-19 cases at its West Florida facilities and has surpassed our highest peak since the pandemic began in 2020,” AdventHealth said in a press release. “We have seen an increase in COVID hospital admissions at AdventHealth Hospitals in Hardee, Highlands, Hillsborough, Marion, Pasco and Pinellas.”
If cases continue to rise, AdventHealth assures the public that they have adequate personal protective equipment, ventilators and specialty equipment to quickly and safely convert existing rooms in the hospital into standard patient rooms or intensive care rooms for coronavirus patients.
In addition, the AdventHealth Wesley Chapel will limit the number of visitors from Monday. Other AdventHealth Hospitals in Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas will begin updating visiting guidelines as needed later this week.
On Wednesday, the BayCare Health System announced that it would limit elective procedures that require overnight stays in Hillsborough and Polk hospitals due to the increasing number of patients being hospitalized with the coronavirus.
In a press release, BayCare Health said that COVID patients in BayCare hospitals have more than tripled in the past three weeks.
Affected hospitals include St. Joseph’s, St. Joseph’s Children’s, and St. Joseph’s Women’s in Tampa; St. Josephs north in Lutz; St. Joseph’s South in Riverview; South Florida Baptist in Plant City; Bartow Regional Medical Center; Winter Haven and Winter Haven ladies.
St. Joseph’s, Winter Haven, and Winter Haven Women’s paused voting Thursday. The other facilities in Hillsborough and Polk Counties will be on hold on Monday.
BayCare hospitals in Pinellas and Pasco counties are not affected.
“Our priority is always patient safety and the assurance that we are available to meet the acute health needs of our communities,” said Glenn Waters, BayCare’s chief operating officer. “This step helps us to continue to have the capacity to meet these needs.”
Tampa General Hospital has yet to announce a similar postponement of voting.
TGH postponed elective surgeries and procedures during the peak of the pandemic last year and did not resume until May 4.
However, the hospital said that coronavirus cases at its facilities “have increased dramatically in the past three weeks, more than tripled and remain very volatile”.
The hospital found that 80 percent of the coronavirus patients it sees haven’t been vaccinated.
“It’s important that people get vaccinated, especially right now,” said Dr. Peggy Duggan, Tampa General Chief Medical Officer. “What we are seeing now is an unvaccinated pandemic.”
Duggan said the hospital also treats younger patients. During the first wave of the disease last year, the average age of patients in the Tampa General ICU was in the mid-1970s. It’s 42 years old now, she said.
“The risk of the Delta variant is high, and if you’ve had COVID in the past, you can still get this variant – a common misconception among people – and you can give it to each other,” Duggan said. “It is such a highly contagious disease – about 60 percent more contagious – that entire households are currently receiving the Delta variant, whereas in the past one or two people could avoid infection.”
In the past year, the elderly, people with pre-existing conditions, and healthcare workers received the vaccine more frequently. The higher incidence in younger and healthier people is now, Duggan said, because “they are the last group to get vaccinated and take vaccination seriously”.
Those who have been fully vaccinated can still get infected, but their symptoms are generally milder and they are less likely to need hospital treatment, she said.
For those who haven’t been vaccinated, the risks are greatly increased with this highly contagious new strain, which was first identified in December 2020 and quickly became the dominant strain of the virus in India and the UK, Duggan said.
This month, Florida accounted for about 20 percent of the new COVID-19 cases in the United States.
“I think people have a tendency to say, ‘This is not going to happen to me’ and if it does happen to them, it may be too late,” said Dr. Seetha Lakshmi, Tampa General Medical Director for Global Emerging Diseases Institute and Assistant Professor at USF Health Morsani College of Medicine.
“The human suffering and death that I see today is not necessary – it is so preventable,” said Lakshmi. “It just breaks my heart. The key message is that while the vaccine won’t stop you from getting the disease, it will stop you from seeing us in intensive care and losing your life.”
Some parents may have been reluctant to vaccinate their teenagers after hearing of rare cases of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, in some teenagers who received the vaccine. However, Lakshmi points to recent data from the Advisory Committee on Vaccination Practices, which underscores the clear benefit of the vaccine.
In 674 confirmed cases, young men developed the disease after the second dose of vaccine, but the cases were very mild, no prescription drugs were required (only Aleve or Advil required), and there were no deaths.
There are now more than 11 million young adults aged 18 to 24 years vaccinated in the United States.
“ACIP came out and said, ‘Please get the vaccine and that’s why: for every million doses of vaccine given to adolescents, we’re preventing 215 admissions, 71 admissions to the intensive care unit and two deaths in that age group compared to 56 cases of mild illness “. Myocarditis, ‘”said Lakshmi.
The surge in delta variant cases has been understandably difficult for some frontline health workers who have fallen back into the physical and emotional whirlwind of caring for COVID patients struggling for their lives.
Now they are faced with a harrowing new reality of seeing patients getting closer to their old age.
“Our employees are exhausted from the year they have passed and some are frustrated because it feels preventable,” said Duggan. “And when you, as a young doctor, start looking at your patients and they look like you – and could be you – it affects you differently. You look at yourself and it’s tough. “
Both doctors said the best thing residents can do for themselves and their families is to get vaccinated.
“It will protect you, your family and the community,” said Duggan. “It is really imperative that we all take safety precautions based on common sense. For example, in my own practice, I have restricted going out and wearing a mask when I go to the grocery store, passing this virus on to someone else – and that’s the last thing I want to do.
“It doesn’t have to last long. If we can continue to take precautions and move the vaccination rate needle, that will really make a difference. We all wanted to get out of this pandemic, but we’re back. “So we have to take these steps to get us out of harm’s way,” she said.
On Wednesday, the CDC issued a recommendation that all residents should wear masks in indoor public spaces, including schools.
In Florida, 66 out of 67 counties are listed with “high” coronavirus transmission rates in the community. Glades County is the only Florida county that has a “significant” level of community carryover listed.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider a county to be “high” transmission if there have been 100 or more cases of the coronavirus per 100,000 population or a test positive rate of 10 percent or more in the past seven days.
Five Florida counties – Duval, Hillsborough, Orange, Miami-Dade, and Broward – had 5,000 or more new cases in the past seven days, according to the CDC’s data tracker.
The national average is 49 new cases per 100,000 people per day, more than three times the average rate in the United States of about 16 new cases per 100,000 people per day.
CDC
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