Florida’s hospitals ‘completely overwhelmed’ with sick kids

Pediatric hospitals in Florida have become “completely overwhelmed” with young patients battling COVID-19 amid the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, a doctor says.

The grim development comes as Florida on Sunday reported having the highest number of children — 172 — hospitalized with the coronavirus, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services.

“The numbers of cases in our hospitals in children and our children’s hospitals are completely overwhelmed,” Dr. Aileen Marty, an infectious disease expert at Florida International University, told CNN late Friday.

“Our pediatricians, the nursing, the staff are exhausted, and the children are suffering. And it is absolutely devastating … Our children are very much affected. We’ve never seen numbers like this before,” she said.

Sharp rises in hospital admissions involving kids with COVID-19 have been recorded in other states, too — including Arkansas, which had its own record number of children Wednesday hospitalized with the virus.

“We’re seeing a real surge with the Delta variant that we did not see previously,” Dr. Rick Barr, chief clinical officer at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, told CNN at the end of last month. “This is the worst that we’ve seen it for kids, absolutely.”

“[Parents are] shocked because the messaging out there has been that kids don’t really get sick with COVID, and we didn’t see serious illnesses, except for rare instances, with the previous variants,” he said.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson admitted Wednesday that he was wrong for previously banning mask mandates in the state.

Experts have urged people in areas with high positivity rates for COVID-19 to wear masks regardless of vaccination status in order to protect vulnerable groups, such as children too young to receive the shot.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has faced criticism for forbidding school districts in his state from requiring masks for students and school workers amid the crisis, saying it should be up to the parents and employees to decide.
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Families protesting potential mask mandates in school at a Hillsborough County Schools Board meeting in Tampa, Florida, on July 27, 2021.

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana on Sunday blasted DeSantis for standing in the way of mask mandates.

“The local officials should have control here,” said Cassidy, who is also a physician, on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Whenever politicians mess with public health, usually it doesn’t work out well for public health.’’

Cassidy said the Republican governor’s approach went against conservative values.

“I’m a conservative. I think you govern best when you govern closest to the people being governed,” Cassidy said.

“And if a local community is [seeing] their ICU is full and the people at the local schools see that they’ve got to make sure they stay open because otherwise children miss out for another year of school and they put in policy, then the local officials should be listened to. That is a conservative principle.”

Surging case numbers have been recorded in the state amid the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant.

Florida broke a new record over the weekend for COVID-19 cases — recording 134,506 infections Friday for the first time since the pandemic began.

The state’s hospitalizations also reached their highest point in the pandemic last week, with more than 12,864 confirmed COVID-19 patients as of Friday.

[SIZE=7]Trump Protegee Ron DeSantis Announces Plan to Basically Ensure Florida Schoolchildren Get COVID[/SIZE]

Quick: You’re the governor of a state where COVID-19 is literally out of control, reportedly accounting for about 20% of all new infections in the country. As one doctor recently explained, if your state was a country, the U.S. would probably impose a travel ban on people visiting from it. Not only are things really, really bad across the board, but when it comes to children, your state currently holds the record for the youngest people admitted to the hospital in the past week. Do you (a) start taking this thing seriously, by imposing public health measures known to stop the spread of the virus (b) think of the children, and follow other states in requiring masks in the fall or (c) at the very least allow individual schools to make their own decisions on the issue of masks, including letting them decide they’re necessary? If you’re Florida governor Ron DeSantis, the answer is a resounding “none of the above” and an added note to “screw the kids.”

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On Monday, DeSantis’s office threatened to withhold the pay of superintendents and school board members who ignore the governor’s executive order banning mask mandates for schools. Just so it’s clear, that means if a school district looks at the (overwhelming) data and decides that it would like to protect its community—from getting sick and potentially dying—DeSantis will block them from getting paid to score political points with conservatives. Usually, school districts get in serious trouble if they’re caught putting kids in harm’s way, but in this scenario, DeSantis is threatening to punish anyone caught protecting kids (and teachers) from catching a highly contagious disease. Which, in the words of health experts, is fucking insane, even for Florida.

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The warning comes as infections in the Sunshine State have increased 51% in the past week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University; Florida reported 134,506 new COVID-19 cases from July 30 to August 5, more than any other seven-day period. Meanwhile, the delta variant has been more harmful to children than the original strain, with 4,615 Florida children hospitalized last week, Rolling Stone noted. “Our pediatricians, the nursing, the staff are exhausted, and the children are suffering, and it is absolutely devastating,” Aileen Marty, M.D., an infectious disease expert at Florida International University, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 on Friday night. “Our children are very much affected. We’ve never seen numbers like this before.”

“The viral load in Florida is so high right now, there are really only two places on the planet where it’s higher—one is Louisiana and the other is Botswana,” Jonathan Reiner, M.D., a professor at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, told CNN on Sunday. “It’s so high in Florida that I think if Florida were another country, we would have to consider banning travel from Florida to the United States.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/08/ron-desantis-florida-covid-anti-mask-measures

Democrats been fighting this Man like the world is coming to an end.

Hii Delta wanapema aje?

Lab-WE CAN ONLY TEST FOR COVID NOT FOR VARIANTS-how do they know there is a Delta Variant "surge"?

It’s a high time CS Kagwe tell Kenyans how M.o.H is detecting these variants.

Conservative chieth…wacha wakipatepate