New data shows growing COVID-19 hospital admissions in Northeast Florida

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – With more primary care health workers getting the vaccine in Jacksonville, more and more patients are getting the virus.

Since Thanksgiving, the number of patients with the coronavirus in Duval County has risen to levels not seen since mid-August.

Although the ICU and COVID-19 wards are not full in the area, the wards are filling with more patients.

As of this Friday morning, there had been 111 cases at the five Baptist Health facilities in the area with 17 in the ICU. The Agency for Health Care Administration reported Friday afternoon that 272 patients had been admitted to Duval County for a “primary” diagnosis of COVID-19.

Dr. Baptist Health’s Elizabeth Ransom said the hospital is watching this closely.

“We have the capacity and the ability to manage this. We have enough PPE. We’ve been building stocks for months now, so we feel good about that. And the best news is, as you said, we are starting to get our frontline workers vaccinated, ”said Ransom.

It’s the same at UF Health Jacksonville in two hospitals. There are 56 cases of coronavirus and 12 people are in the ICU.

As more people in the community are tested, we get a better idea of ​​hospital admissions in Northeast Florida.

New data from the US Department of Health and Human Services gives us a weekly snapshot of the situation in hospitals that News4Jax has not heard about on a regular basis.

For example, we now know that in the three Ascension St. Vincent’s hospitals in the area, during the seven days ending December 10, an average of 96 COVID-19 patients with 29 patients in ICUs.

During the same period, Memorial Hospital had an average of 25 COVID-19 patients, six of whom were in ICU.

Orange Park Medical Center had 36 patients with seven in the ICU, while Flagler Hospital had 26 people with COVID-19 with six in the ICU.

While the numbers are a cause for concern, doctors said people are getting better.

“Fortunately, we are not seeing a big increase in the number of fatalities, thank goodness, and we hope we don’t,” Ransom said.