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Vaccines keep hospitalizations low, for now
Briona Arradondo reports
TAMPA, Fla. - When Americans return home from their holiday travels, hospitals across Florida are preparing for a surge of COVID-19 patients, as the especially-contagious omicron variant makes its way through the population. However, hospitalizations have remained low in the days before Christmas, which gives doctors hope that vaccines are doing their jobs at preventing severe illness.
The demand for tests still remains high. Hillsborough County health officials said that’s a sign of what’s going around in the community.
"For the past four or five days, it has been really through the roof with people getting tested," said Ryan Pedigo, the preparedness and response director for public health at the Florida Department of Health - Hillsborough County. "Hillsborough was running at a little bit over 90 cases per 100,000, that's the rates we look at, which means we have substantial transmission in Hillsborough County."
Earlier in the pandemic, more infections meant more people landing in the hospital. Now, with millions of Floridians vaccinated and getting boosted, AdventHealth doctors hope those measures have their intended result – fewer hospitalizations.
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Some stores limiting at-home COVID test sales
With COVID-19 cases climbing across the country, testing sites have become overwhelmed with long lines. To avoid that wait, many have turned to at-home COVID tests from drug stores, and these stores are now trying to keep up with demand by limiting the number of purchases.
"We have not seen an increase in our inpatient census even though we recognize that CentraCare positivity rate is over 25%, and we’ve seen increased community transmission," said Dr. Vincent Hsu, AdventHealth’s executive director of infection prevention and hospital epidemiologist. "This does suggest that omicron is less prone to causing severe disease because we are not seeing those numbers in the hospital. But again, it’s still early. We don’t want to say this is done and over with."
AdventHealth West Florida said doctors are caring for 75 COVID patients in the Tampa Bay hospitals as of Thursday, and doctors are seeing a slow increase in people coming in. Hsu said they will have to wait and see how things change in the next few weeks.
"I am of the opinion that has more time goes by based on our observations that we will not see a surge as significant as we had seen over the summer," said Hsu.
Hillsborough County health officials said they found one in five tests, 20.53% of 2,085, came back positive Wednesday at the county-run site in West Tampa.
"What we do want you to do is to go get tested if you have symptoms because we know that omicron is very contagious and we want to make sure that you understand your status," said Hsu.
Doctors said they highly recommend wearing face masks again in public places and social distancing when you can.