TAMPA, Fla. — Local doctors say there are still a number of people who are getting hospitalized for COVID-19 in the community.
“I don’t want people to think that it’s gone or it’s disappeared. We’re still seeing very sick people with COVID,” said Dr. Jason Wilson, Associate Medical Director of the Emergency Room at Tampa General Hospital.
“By far the vast majority of those cases of COVID that we see in hospitalized patients are people who have not been vaccinated or are people who have been vaccinated but have not had two weeks after vaccination or received both doses of their vaccine,” he added.
Wilson says the vaccines decrease symptomatic cases of the virus, which is why they’re not really seeing vaccinated patients.
Over the past year, mostly older people and people with underlying medical issues were the patients who were coming in with severe COVID-19.
Now, since a lot of older people have been vaccinated, doctors say they’re not really seeing them in the hospital anymore because of the virus.
“What we’re instead seeing are younger, healthier patients who are getting COVID because they’re not vaccinated. What’s concerning about that is, remember it takes a lot of young people to get COVID to see a sick person. So that means if I’m seeing young people who are sick still in the hospital, there’s still COVID out there,” said Wilson.