TALLAHASSEE, FL — A tearful patient from South Florida thanked his doctors in a recorded message played Tuesday during the governor’s update on the coronavirus outbreak in Florida that coincided with World Health Day.
“You guys saved my life,” the Broward Health Medical Center patient said from his hospital bed in the recording. “I’m lucky that you took the time to try, because other places wouldn’t have.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters that Florida still has 43 percent of its hospital beds available for patients as Floridians battle the illness that has touched 64 of the state’s 67 counties and claimed 283 lives in little more than a month. See also Florida Coronavirus Update: 14,504 Cases, 283 Deaths
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More than half of the state’s total cases have been reported in three South Florida counties —Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.
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“When these patients are admitted, some of them get really, really sick. We didn’t have too many options,” acknowledged Dr. Sunil Kumar of Broward Health, who has been on the front lines of the health care crisis in Broward County, which had 2,230 confirmed cases as of Tuesday.
Speaking via remote video at the press conference, Kumar said Broward Health has been giving patients a combination of hydroxychloroquine, an arthritis medicine that also can be used to prevent malaria, along with cholesterol-lowering statins and a five-day course of the antibiotic azithromycin together with respiratory therapy.
“Patients — usually when they are sick — they are lying down on their back, and these patients are intubated,” the doctor said, referring to the procedure in which a tube is placed into the patient’s airway to assist with breathing. “What we do about six hours a day, they lie on their back; and for the rest of the day, they are lying on their stomach …. This seems to be working.”
Kumar said the medical community must continue “aggressive efforts” to conduct a randomized controlled trial of the best methods to treat the illness.
“Every day we are learning something new,” he said. “I’m pretty confident that we will get to the bottom of this.”
Also speaking at Tuesday’s news conference was Dr. Carlos Campo of Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, who warned people to avoid taking hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin without medical supervision. He said the two drugs could lead to fatal arrhythmias.
“I would not recommend just starting these as an outpatient because, obviously, patients cannot be monitored, and again the medications themselves can put the patient at risk,” Campo said. He said some data also suggests that vitamin C, vitamin D and zinc may reduce viral replication with COVID-19.
DeSantis said 43 percent of Miami-Dade’s hospital beds were still available for patients, while 46 percent of beds were available in Broward, 49 percent in Palm Beach County and 41 percent in Hillsborough County.
The governor said the state has screened 15,000 travelers primarily from the New York City and New Orleans areas since the outbreak began. DeSantis ordered travelers from hot spots to self-quarantine for two weeks when entering Florida.
DeSantis also reported that a number of five-minute COVID-19 tests have arrived in Florida and would be distributed to hard-hit areas of the state as well as being used for spot checks at long-term care facilities for the elderly.
“Obviously, if you are COVID positive in a nursing home, that can create an outbreak,” DeSantis said. “Now you have the ability to really know — and if you have somebody who may be sick but doesn’t have COVID — that’s a much different situation. So, I think that will be something that is very important.”
He said testing is getting underway in the Jacksonville area by the University of Florida Health Shands Hospital to determine the extent to which asymptomatic people are carrying the illness.
A similar test at The Villages retirement community last month turned up no cases of the virus when some 600 to 1,200 people were voluntarily tested. All of the tests were negative, according to DeSantis.