Florida Hospitals Fight One of the Worst Coronavirus Outbreaks in the Nation
Dr. David Wein, an emergency medicine physician at Tampa General Hospital in Florida, said the Covid-19 outbreak there is the most severe he and his colleagues have witnessed since the pandemic began.
In Hillsborough County, where Tampa General Hospital is located, the number of new Covid cases has reached an average of about 1,200 per day, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That’s more than twice the national rate when adjusting for population.
Covid patients are now occupying nearly 200 of Tampa General Hospital’s 1,041 beds as of Tuesday, according to data provided by the hospital, which serves western Florida and the greater Tampa Bay region. Sixty-one patients are in the ICU. The surge in patients, most of them unvaccinated, is causing a strain on the hospital’s 8,000-plus member staff, Wein said.
