Florida hospitals fill up with COVID-19 patients

Florida, which is experiencing its highest surge in coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic, is also seeing its hospitals fill up, and some of the patients are younger.

Hospitals around the state report having to put emergency room visitors believed to have COVID-19 symptoms in beds in hallways. Medical staff also have reported a noticeable drop in the age of patients.

The state, which is leading the US in per capita hospitalizations, recorded 21,683 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, breaking the previous record of 10,170, recorded July 23, 2020, according to the Florida Hospital Association.

"The virus has a new target: the unvaccinated and younger people," Mary Mayhew, Florida Hospital Association president and CEO, said in a statement. "Healthy people from their teens to their 40s are now finding themselves in the hospital and on a ventilator.''

South Florida hospitals reported a rise in younger patients with COVID-19, with many of them needing intensive care and nearly all of whom aren't vaccinated.

Dr Marcos Mestre, vice-president and chief medical officer at Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami, said there were 17 patients with COVID-19 on Friday, including six in the ICU and one who needed a ventilator. About half of the patients were under age 12, Mestre said, and the rest were older and eligible for the vaccine.

On Sunday, the US Health and Human Services Department said that 10,207 people — including 114 children — were hospitalized in Florida with confirmed cases of COVID-19, The Associated Press reported. More than 95 percent of those patients aren't fully vaccinated. A week ago, total COVID-19 hospitalizations in Florida were 7,391.

The US on Monday finally reached President Joe Biden's July 4 goal of getting at least one COVID-19 shot into the arms of 70 percent of Americans about a month late, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The percentage not vaccinated stands at 32.4 percent of the eligible US population. Alabama and Mississippi are the only states to have fully vaccinated less than 35 percent of their residents.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio stopped short of issuing a full mask mandate on Monday, instead strongly recommending that people wear masks inside all public indoor spaces regardless of vaccination status.

"We want to emphasize vaccinations, vaccinations. That is the whole ballgame," the mayor said during his morning news conference. His comments came amid rising coronavirus cases driven by the highly contagious Delta variant.

The mayor said that the number of people at city-run vaccination sites doubled on Saturday, after the city promised to give people a $100 prepaid debit card to get vaccinated. On Monday, there were long lines of people awaiting testing and vaccinations at several of the sites.

Earlier, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo at a separate news conference urged localities to follow the CDC guidance last week to prioritize indoor masking for all. Cuomo was stripped of his "pandemic powers" in March, and after an underlying emergency declaration expired in late June, the governor said he could no longer reissue a statewide mask mandate without having the Legislature pass a law for it.

Cuomo also announced that Metropolitan Transit Authority and Port Authority transit employees will be subject to a vaccine or weekly testing beginning on Labor Day, Sept 6. Cuomo said he would consider mandating vaccinations for schoolteachers and nursing-home employees if case counts increased.

New York's hospitalizations have doubled, as cases have increased fourfold over the last month, Cuomo said.

The seven-day average number of confirmed and probable daily coronavirus cases now exceeds 1,200 in New York City. That figure was less than 250 at the start of July and peaked at more than 6,400 in early January, according to city statistics.

For the week of July 19, the infection rate in the state reflected 4 per 100,000 among fully vaccinated people, and 17 per 100,000 among unvaccinated people, Cuomo said.

In California, seven Bay Area counties on Monday announced a return of indoor mask requirements, regardless of vaccination status.

The public health offices in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Sonoma counties made the joint announcement. Sacramento, Los Angeles and Yolo counties already have made masks mandatory in indoor public settings, with few exceptions.

The 10 counties have a combined population exceeding 19 million residents, almost half of the state's entire population.

US Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, announced Monday that he has tested positive for the coronavirus despite being vaccinated and has experienced "flulike symptoms". Graham said that he now has only "mild symptoms" and is very glad he had been vaccinated because "without vaccination I am certain I would not feel as well as I do now".