Hospitalizations may be spiking along with new COVID-19 case counts

During a weekly phone call with nursing home operators on Thursday, Mary Mayhew, secretary of the state Agency for Health Care Administration, said 10,000 people in Florida have been hospitalized with COVID-19 over the past week.

Thus far, the state has not released daily or weekly numbers of COVID-related hospitalizations, reporting only a cumulative total. As of July 2, the state had listed 15,150 hospitalizations. On July 9, the state department of health listed a total of 17,167 hospitalizations since the pandemic’s start.

That would indicate an increase of 2,017 between July 2 and July 9, leaving Mayhew’s statement about 10,000 new hospitalizations at odds with the running count.

"We are obviously seeing an increase in cases and an increase in hospitalizations. Over the last 7 days, we’ve seen over 10,000 additional admissions for COVID in the state,” Mayhew said in the briefing. Mayhew made the remarks in a phone call recorded by the Florida Health Care Association, and Florida Trend was not able to immediately ask her to respond to the discrepancy. Members of the media are requested to listen to recordings, rather than participate in the live call to allow providers access to the limited lines. 

The spike in hospitalizations accompanies a surge in testing and positive cases. To date, 232,718 individuals have tested positive for the virus and 4,009 people have died. State data shows regions with the largest percentage of cases are in South Florida. Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties account for 98,554 positive tests, or roughly 43% of total cases. In recent weeks, case counts have also begun to spike in parts of Central Florida and the Tampa Bay region.

Mayhew did not say in the briefing whether the increased hospitalizations corresponded with the areas where cases have been spiking but said that the state is monitoring hospital staffing levels closely. “We know as we look at the challenges we face in our state that staffing continues to be the challenge — to make sure that we have adequate staffing throughout the state to meet the needs in our long-term care facilities and certainly within our hospitals.”

Earlier in the week, Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state is sending 100 medical workers — mostly nurses — to Miami to help Jackson Health System deal with an influx of COVID patients. The state does not provide data on the acuity of hospitalized patients, or a daily count of hospitalizations.  But a Miami-Dade "COVID-Trend Tracker" created and maintained by researchers at Florida International University shows 1,641 hospitalized patients in the county with COVID as of July 6. Of those patients, 333 were in intensive care and 221 on ventilators.