AdventHealth goes red with nearly 900 patients hospitalized with COVID-19

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ORLANDO, Florida AdventHealth, the largest hospital chain in central Florida, has once again raised its emergency status due to rising numbers of COVID-19 patients, officials said Monday of health.

Hospitals had been under green status, or as usual, for a few months as vaccinations increased, but on Thursday AdventHealth announced it was raising its status to yellow. Now AdventHealth is going red again.

AdventHealth Orlando Chief Medical Officer Dr Victor Herrera addressed the change on Monday in a COVID-19 update with Orange County officials.

We’re approaching an all-time high, in terms of the number of hospital patients with COVID-19 cases, which is a stretch in our capacity, Herrera said.

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Across the hospital system, 862 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized as of Monday morning, according to AdventHealth officials. This includes hospitals in Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Lake, Polk, Volusia and Flagler counties. The number of patients infected with the virus is currently close to the peak that the health system saw in January with 900 patients.

A red level status means hospitals will postpone all elective non-urgent outpatient surgeries from Tuesday. Patients will be notified if their surgeries need to be rescheduled.

When we are in a situation like this, where our capacity is limited, we may need to reschedule care that is not urgent. So, as a reminder, this is what the red level means. We carry out a systematic review of all the procedures planned for the patients, and if there is something that can wait, we make this decision together with a doctor who is taking care of that patient so that we can increase our capacity, Herrera said.

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Despite the high status, AdventHealth officials said their system was not at risk of reaching capacity.

Although we are in a very limited capacity situation, we are ready to meet the demands of our community and any health care needs, Herrera said. We have the right equipment, space and everything needed even as cases continue to increase to continue caring for COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients.

The chief medical officer said 90% of patients at the hospital had not been vaccinated.

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If someone gets a COVID-19 vaccine, based on what we’ve seen, their chances of being hospitalized are very low, or probably well below 1%, Herrera said.

Herrera also specifically addressed vaccine reluctance in women who are looking to get pregnant or who are currently pregnant. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is no evidence that any of the available COVID-19 vaccines cause infertility or impact a woman’s menstrual cycles.

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Herrera said the hospital is currently caring for a pregnant woman who is intubated in intensive care. The hospital is now seeing more pregnant women with COVID-19 than previous increases in cases.

This is a reminder to our community and pregnant women to consider the COVID-19 vaccine and to have this conversation with their doctors. We want to encourage pregnant women to think about vaccination, he said. Again, we don’t know yet if this is related to the delta variant, but there is clearly a higher number of very sick pregnant women with COVID-19 right now compared to before.

Dr Raul Pino, head of Orange County health at the Florida Department of Health, said the county reported 13 deaths last week, the youngest being 27. Not all of these individuals were vaccinated.

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