TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa General Hospital officials said the hospital is seeing between 20-30 daily COVID-19 admissions.
As of Tuesday, August 24, the hospital has 258 COVID-19 admissions.
Dr. Jason Wilson, Associate Medical Director of the Emergency Department at Tampa General Hospital and associate professor at USF Health, said the majority of patients remain unvaccinated.
"What we’re seeing, instead of people in their 70s, are really people in their 50s or 40s or 30s who are sick with COVID. We're seeing pregnant women. We're seeing young, sick people," said Dr. Jason Wilson.
He said the vaccinated patients who end up hospitalized tend to be immunocompromised.
"When we do see a breakthrough case of COVID in a vaccinated patient usually those patients are well to go home and when we have to admit those patients to the hospital, it’s usually because those patients have things like transplants or in chemotherapy or some other type of immunosuppression," said Dr. Wilson.
He said the volume of COVID patients has remained steady.
"About 250 people at any given time in the hospital and 20 to 30 admissions a day. That's not a good place to be. It's reassuring that the volume is not going up, but remember this is off of a prior surge peak of 125 patients in the hospital so really double that number, we've plateaued at for the past few days at this point," he said.
Dr. Wilson said the high volume is creating a strain on the healthcare system throughout the Tampa Bay area.
Sarasota Memorial Hospital said the hospital leased a refrigerated trailer as a precautionary measure to expand the capacity of the morgue in case it is needed during this fourth wave of the pandemic.
"The trailer is not in use at the moment, but is being prepared in case we see a surge in the coming days/weeks," said Allison Gottermeier with Sarasota Memorial Health Care System.
A spokesperson for Sarasota Memorial Hospital said the hospital is seeing a flattening of the number of people testing positive at our hospital, so they are hoping the trend will lead to a decline in hospitalizations in the coming days/weeks.