Nearly 7,000 Floridians are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, according to new county-by-county data released Friday by the state Agency for Health Care Administration.
The data, which for the first time breaks down the number of people in the hospital with coronavirus, was promised by the state two weeks ago.
It does not show how many patients are in general hospital beds or intensive care units.
Click here to see the latest hospitalizations by county.
As of Friday, Miami-Dade had more than 1,500 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, the largest number reported in Florida, followed by Broward County at 970 and Palm Beach County at 600. Orange County had the fourth-largest number of COVID-19 hospitalizations at 478.
Up to now, Florida has been one of only three states to withhold current COVID-19 hospitalization data from the public. Experts have criticized the state for not releasing the data, which is a valuable metric for epidemiologists and researchers in assessing the spread of the disease. Hospitalizations provide a glimpse of what was happening two weeks ago when people were being exposed to the virus.
“Hospitalizations are a measure of severity [of the epidemic],” said Dr. Jason Salemi, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida College of Public Health, in a recent interview. “It not only can demonstrated the impact on people, but also on our health systems and how many cases they’re starting to see.”
Seminole County ranked 10th in the state with 164 hospitalizations.
Seminole has been one of the few counties in the state to post its current COVID-19 hospitalization data on a personalized dashboard, which currently shows 235 COVID-19 hospitalizations, a difference of 70 patients from what the state is reporting.
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Seminole County officials said they get their data directly from the county’s four different hospitals and are constantly updating their dashboard. They weren’t sure what accounts for the difference with the state.
They said the number reported by hospitals in Seminole County is for all patients who are hospitalized and are isolated because they have COVID-19.
It’s not exactly clear what criteria the state is using to count current COVID-19 hospitalizations. It could be that the state is only counting patients who are hospitalized because of COVID-19 and not those who are diagnosed with the disease while hospitalized for other reasons.
The data also shows how many people are hospitalized in Lake and Osceola counties, information those counties had not released. With 183 COVID-19 hospitalizations, Osceola County ranked ninth in the state; Lake ranked 14th with 124 hospitalizations.
According to a dashboard by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 16% of Florida hospitals’ inpatient beds are currently occupied by COVID-19 patients.
So far, local health systems have said that their number of COVID-19 patients are growing, but they still have the ability to handle the cases and are not overwhelmed.
Got tips about health care, testing or medical bills? You can reach me at nmiller@orlandosentinel.com. Call, text, Signal: 321-710-7947; Twitter @NaseemMiller.
