Delta variant devastation: Florida hospitals show vaccinated vs unvaccinated ICU patient data

 

As the delta variant continues to ravage communities across the country, Florida hospitals are using social media infographics to show huge disparities in their vaccinated versus unvaccinated caseloads, a visual demonstration that vaccines are highly effective at keeping people out of the hospital.

Lee Health, a health system in the southwest of the state, posted an update on Twitter last Friday showing that out of 81 COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit, only three were confirmed to be vaccinated. Similarly, only three out of the 48 patients on ventilators were confirmed to be vaccinated.

Sarasota Memorial Hospital showed similarly divergent figures in its data on COVID-19 hospitalizations, revealing in a tweet on Monday that only 25 of its 230 hospitalized COVID-19 patients were vaccinated.

Some hospitals, such as Halifax Health in Daytona Beach, are posting similar graphics to Facebook, where they could arguably be more useful as Facebook has the largest proportion of social media users over the age of 65.

Lots of factors are likely to affect the rates of vaccinated patients in any given hospital, including vaccination rates and proportion of senior citizens within the local community. Nationally, data shows that so-called breakthrough COVID cases are rare and tend to be mild, while hospitalizations among those cases are rarer still.

Florida has been among the hardest hit states from the latest summer wave. According to ABC News, it’s one of five states where ICUs are more than 90% full. The others are Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas.