Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava hosted a virtual press conference Friday to discuss concerns over COVID-19 hospitalization rates.
Levine Cava was joined by hospital CEOs and other community leaders to discuss the increasing hospitalization rates.
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"Coronavirus cases are on the rise and we must take this extremely seriously," Levine Cava said. "We’re gravely concerned about overwhelming our healthcare system’s capacity to care for Covid patients."
Hospitalization rates have been steadily rising in the county in recent weeks, along with coronavirus cases and positivity rates.
The latest "New Normal Dashboard" from the county released Thursday showed 654 COVID-19 patients in non-ICU beds. That figure had been at 457 as recent as Nov. 20.
There were 164 coronavirus patients in ICU beds as of Thursday, up from 125 reported on Nov. 21.
"We learned over the summer our staff is not only our most precious resource but also our most scarce. Our community cannot afford to have even a small share of our nurses and doctors catching this disease," Jackson Health System CEO Carlos Migoya said.
Despite the rise in hospitalizations, the dashboard showed 978 ICU beds and 5,441 non-ICU beds were available in the county. But the mayor said that can quickly change.
"If we push our system to the limit when Covid cases spread too quickly we will be at a breaking point," Levine Cava said. "In the next few weeks what we do will be critical to determining how we get control of this disease, in whether we overwhelm our healthcare system and how we keep our economy going forward."
