FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – South Florida doctors are optimistic that there is a light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, with the number of patients in hospitals decreasing and people who are admitted not being as sick as was seen in months past.
“There’s a lot of variables, but it’s looking very good right now,” said Dr. Aileen Marty, infectious diseases expert at Florida International University. “It doesn’t feel like an emergency right now. It doesn’t feel like a public health threat right now in the medical community. We are able to manage the cases we are facing. Unless there’s a big surprise in a new variant, it’s unlikely to get back to as bad as it has been.”
Marty said it’s fair to say that, at this time, COVID-19 is no longer a major public health emergency in South Florida and this is primarily due to a high percentage of the population having a degree of immunity through vaccines and prior infections.
We also have new treatments and medications allowing for faster recovery and less time spent in hospitals. Emergency rooms aren’t stressed like they were months ago.
Across South Florida hospitals:
- 75 Covid-positive patients are being treated at Jackson Health system hospitals, compared to a month ago when 310 patients were being treated
- Baptist Health hospitals have 56 patients
- Across six Memorial hospitals, there are 131 patients, a big drop from 680 patients from a few weeks ago
- And there are 20 COVID-positive patients at Broward Health hospitals
“Hopefully, we are starting to see what the post-COVID normalcy will bring us,” said Dr. Joshua Lenchus, the chief medical officer for Broward Health. “These ripples hopefully will replace the waves that we’ve seen and we will go through this dealing with this like we do with the annual influenza season.”
For perspective, the Florida Department of Health last week reported 25,640 new COVID-19 cases across the state, far below the 427,548 reported during the worst week of the omicron variant spike in early January.
As far as face masks are concerned, in accordance with newly released CDC guidelines, Marty said they can be taken off indoors for most people who are not immunocompromised or have other serious medical issues, but if the cases start to surge, that can change.
See the latest weekly COVID-19 report from Florida’s health department, released Friday: