JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Coronavirus cases have been steadily rising in the past month, but since the Thanksgiving holiday, local hospitals are seeing an increase in cases and hospitalizations.
UF Health Infection Prevention Director Chad Neilsen told Jacksonville’s Morning News that there has been a quick surge of cases since the Thanksgiving holiday.
“We have increased our number of COVID hospitalizations. They’ve actually almost doubled in the last couple of weeks,” Neilsen said.
They are hoping the cases will drop in a week or so, but that depends on how the community does with social distancing. Neilsen notes that while the extension of the mask mandate was a good sign, people are starting to be fatigued of the CDC guidelines.
“I think that people are following the guidelines as much as possible. But I do think there’s a lax attitude across the North Florida region when it comes to restaurant shopping in different places of that nature, because they’ll say, well, we’re just following the state guidelines, which is as a restaurant or bar we’re allowed to be open,” Neilsen said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s no risk there. And we certainly are seeing some fatigued attitudes out there in the community.”
While dealing with the increase of cases, local hospitals including UF Health are preparing for the distribution of a vaccine that may get approved next week.
“So our hospital, along with many others, have been following ACA and health department guidance in terms of getting ready to actually distribute. Obviously, the first band of people, per the CDC, to receive this vaccine is going to be a long-term care facility residents, emergency workers and health care workers,” Neilsen said. “And so that’s what our plans are, is how do we do this not only for our own hospital, but also the community.”
Neilsen notes that the distribution has not been finalized and they will get more information during and after the FDA meeting on December 10th.
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