JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – UF Health Jacksonville said it is expecting a recent surge in COVID-19 patients to get worse.
“We have definitely seen a surge over the last week or so, and we do expect it to continue to get worse as more of these Thanksgiving-type cases continue to show up in the hospital,” said Chad Neilsen, director of infection prevention for the hospital.
It has been 12 days since Thanksgiving, which means anyone who was exposed to the virus during family gatherings should have started or could begin to show symptoms depending on the duration of their visit.
Neilsen said the hospital has learned a lot about the novel coronavirus during the last nine months and, as a result, it’s ready to handle an anticipated surge in the number of patients it treats.
“Currently, here at UF Health Jacksonville, we do have the capacity to continue to accept other patients,” said Neilsen, who also described more about the age of patients being treated for the virus.
“We serve a different type of population than a lot of the city’s hospitals, so most of our patients who tend to come in with coronavirus-type infections tend to be older with co-morbidities. Across the city of Jacksonville and the Duval County area, we are seeing some of that young age, so an average age of new cases is still hovering around 40.”
Neilsen said he expects UF Health Jacksonville to receive the first vaccine, if approved, as early as a week from Monday.
“We have been selected as one of the five staging sites from the Florida Department of Health and what that means, at least at this point, is we have been identified as a site that can actually host the vaccine here and distribute to other hospitals or other locations,” he said. “That does not mean that we are going to be a site where people can line up and get vaccinated.”
The Food and Drug Administration is scheduled to meet on Thursday, Dec. 10, to discuss whether to grant emergency use authorization to Pfizer for its COVID-19 vaccine.
“The vaccine will be able to ship immediately with the potential that by Dec. 14, it could be on the ground for distribution,” Neilsen said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has already said that long-term care facilities will be the first to receive the vaccine, followed by frontline workers and then people over the age of 65.
Neilsen explained why he believes if the vaccine is granted approval, Americans should be confident it is safe.
“Right now, if people say, ‘Why is the FDA taking so long to approve this when Pfizer asked on Nov. 20 (for approval)?’ The reason is they are looking at all the data. They are making sure everything passes muster and that this is a safe efficacious vaccine,” Neilsen said. “So what we want to see is them taking their time before it hits the hundreds of millions of people across the United States.”