As the coronavirus continues to spread across Florida, leaders of Pinellas County’s top hospitals urged the County Commission on Tuesday to keep the local emergency order in place and to continue the requirement to make people wear masks in public.
Hospital executives from AdventHealth, BayCare and HCA told commissioners about nursing shortages, slow test results, rising virus cases, intensive care units filling up with patients and a drop in the average age of people getting sick from COVID-19. Those younger patients are now requiring advanced medical care to fight the virus, doctors said.
“We have not made a huge dent in flattening the curve,” said Dr. Larry Feinman, chief medical officer for 18 HCA hospitals in west Florida,. “It is not improving and you need to know that.”
He said 10 HCA patients with COVID-19 are on life support equipment called ECMO machines, which provide prolonged cardiac and respiratory support. The oldest is 59 and the youngest is 27, he said. Typically, there might be two patients on those machines, he added.
Young people in the community are contracting the infection, Feinman said. “Make no mistake.”
With more people getting sick, hospitals have again stopped many elective surgeries to free up space and to conserve personal protective equipment, doctors said.
The message from the doctors came on a day when the County Commission held its first in-person meeting in months. The group sat apart in a large room in a county building in Largo. When public officials and employees in the room were not speaking, they wore masks and kept 6 feet apart.
Still, commissioner Janet Long called the in-person gathering “bad optics” at a time of rising virus cases.
Each doctor urged the group to extend the local emergency order. Commissioners voted 7-0 to extend it until July 31.
Pinellas has led the Tampa Bay area in COVID-19 deaths, largely because of outbreaks in long-term care facilities, which are responsible for about 69 percent of the deaths countywide. The latest counts show Pinellas has 13,925 cases since the pandemic began, including 336 deaths.
Jason Dunkel, AdventHealth North Pinellas president and CEO, called it a “perfect storm” this month with hospital employees getting sick during a hiring freeze resulting from the initial onset of the pandemic in March and April. Another obstacle is the time it takes to receive test results because employees must remain on the sidelines until results come back, Dunkel said.
“From a staffing standpoint, this is the most critical thing we’re doing right now,” he said.
Dr. Nishant Anand, executive vice president and chief medical officer of BayCare, said test results need to come back within three days to be effective.
“Until we get a vaccine, we’re still going to have to deal with the ups and downs of cases,” Anand said.
Last week, State Rep. Anthony Sabatini, a Republican lawyer from Howey-in-the-Hills, sued the county to eliminate the mask ordinance enacted last month. The ordinance requires people to wear face coverings while in any indoor establishment.
Dr. Ulyee Choe, director of the Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County, said the rising number of reported cases is likely the result of increased testing, but he cautioned that bar closures and mask ordinance are also likely helping slow the virus spread. Over the last week, the county’s rolling average for positive test results has hovered between 8 percent to 9 percent, Choe said.
Dr. Angus Jameson, medical director for Pinellas County Emergency Medical Services and an emergency room physician, said emergency rooms are not full, but the pandemic is triggering increases in other medical conditions requiring life-saving support. “We’re seeing astronomical rises in overdoses,” he said.
Long asked the doctors how they would respond to people who believe the virus is a hoax and that the mask requirement infringes on constitutional rights.
“We have to respect each other,” Feinman said. “It’s a tremendous sign of disrespect to not wear masks when you’re close. Clearly, this is not a hoax. It’s absurd to think it is.”
Commissioner Kathleen Peters said the growing distrust among the public stems from media reports of motorcycle crash deaths being listed as COVID-19 fatalities and people signing up for virus tests and getting positive results after not taking the tests.
“I’m having trouble understanding the data,” she said.
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