Data Without Doctoring
Dr. David Owen
Morning bed report is good for general beds. ICU raw numbers are still not being reported but for ICU beds, Broward at 89% full is listed as critical (88% full is not critical, go figure). Broward and PBC have PLENTY of general beds westward, upwards of over 40% availability in a few hospitals and several with over 30%. All of the large hospitals in Dade are improving but are still running at 75-85% capacity. ICU bed situation is probably worse than that but remember more capacity is able to be placed online quickly. Fox news reported a bed crisis in Florida this am, perhaps referring to elsewhere in the state but not really down here. In fact, the tri-county area continues to improve slowly. But keep in mind, hospitals tend to empty out, relatively, over the weekend so we'll see how much more capacity is used as the week begins.
Overall, no change, which continues to be good news, given the 10K positive cases noted in the state each day. In the tri-county area, death rates continue to fall. But, there is an uptick of deaths in Broward which may still be catch up from last week although there are reports of another round of infections in NHs. The raw numbers of ICU beds are still unavailable but general bed capacity remains excellent in PBC and good in Dade and Broward, esp. out west. ICU beds percentage usage, however, is listed as critical in Broward (one bed above non-critical) and non-critical in PBC. The percentages of Gen/ICU bed usage is: Dade-unknown, Broward 81/89, and PBC 69/75 this morning. All statewide graphs of daily ED/FSED visits for cough, fever, and SOB continue to inflect downward by daily percentage and weekly visits (raw nos.) from the first week in July. Dade is conservatively estimated to be 18.5% involved (over 500k positive cases) and getting closer to one published minimal HI number of 20% involvement. If this number holds (and I don't think it will, as it pertains to a more homogenous population), then we should begin to see a drop in hospitalizations and deaths in about 10 days.
All in all, stability in all of the data points with suggestion of improvement at the ED (recruitment) level, and certainly no evidence of worsening of any curves as forecast by PH officials and MSM.
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