Hospitals prepare for surge of COVID patients as families prepare to gather for holidays

TAMPA, Fla. - Medical experts say this holiday is not the time to let your guard down. 

Hospitals in Tampa Bay are preparing for a potential surge in COVID-19 cases, as the omicron variant continues to spread faster than any previous version of the virus.

As of Tuesday, hospitalizations were relatively low; Tampa General Hospital reported fewer than 30 COVID patients, while AdventHealth was treating about 70 people across their 11 hospitals in West Florida.

"We're seeing kind of more of a steady number of admissions and discharges over the past few days," said Peggy Duggan, Chief Medical Officer at TGH. "I would say we've seen about a slight uptick from, say, a week and a half ago and total numbers, but still reasonably low numbers for admissions to the hospital with COVID-19."

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Fox News' Dr. Mike Cirigliano offered three ways to keep COVID risk low while gathering with family this holiday. 

First, he says make sure everyone who can get vaccinated and boosted has done so.

Both Pfizer and Moderna say their respective booster shots offer significant protection against the fast-moving omicron variant. 

Second, limit the overall size of your get-together. The fewer people, the lower the risk, Cirigliano said.

Third, encourage guests to test before visiting.  

"When you add that layer of protection by getting people coming to your house tested day-of or 24 hours hour before, you’re going to lower risk to as little as possible," he said. "You don’t want to turn a beautiful, loving experience into a tragedy and you have to be safe and smart."

Meanwhile, Dr. Nishant Anand, BayCare Health System's chief medical officer, said while his hospital system has seen lower COVID patient numbers, he's also beginning to see the signs that another surge is beginning.

"We had a pretty substantial decrease up until just about a week ago and since then, we started to see an increase in the number of people being admitted with COVID," Dr. Anand said. "The positivity rate of everyone we test, the number of people that are turning positive is starting to creep up a little bit."

A broader look by the Florida Hospital Association, which represents more than 200 hospitals and healthcare systems in the state, shows a similar situation.

"We have a little more than 1,200 individuals who are hospitalized statewide for COVID. Our peak in August was 17,000," said Mary Mayhew, FHA's CEO.

Some experts have said the omicron variant appears to be less severe than previous variants, including delta, but it's been far more contagious.

"The latest variant, I think the concern is how rapidly the virus is transmitting that appears to be at a greater pace than delta," said Mayhew. "So even if it is less severe, if it affects a greater number of the population, that will still lead to a volume of hospitalizations. That's the challenge."

Administrators are once again preparing staff for another wave of patients, reviewing their surge plans, checking bed space and making sure they have adequate resources, including protective gear and ventilators.

"We make sure that we have any sort of procurement or machines that would be needed by people who become sick," said Anand. "We try to stay vigilant and watch early science. And we hope that things are just it's just a blip and things will go back to normal."

"I think omicron is going to be different in its trajectory, much quicker rises and infectious, but also drops off very quickly as it certainly in South Africa. And so that's a different almost kinetics for us to manage, right? If it's really a quick rise and fall, we're very different than six weeks of a very high contact COVID patients in the hospital, sick and on ventilators and dying," said Duggan, adding the prolonged hospitalizations associated with the delta variant hit doctors and nurses hard. "That toll of people just sick and on ventilators and dying and the high death rate over the days and weeks really took it out of our staff."

Hospital administrators are urging the public to help their staff in advance by getting vaccinated and a booster; the vaccines appear to minimize the severity and duration of the virus.