SARASOTA, Fla. — It's been a long time coming for Doctors Hospital of Sarasota. For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, officials say they have no admitted patients hospitalized with the virus.
The facility was the first in Florida to treat someone with COVID, a 60-year-old Manatee County man who began experiencing breathing problems in February 2020.
At that time — the very early days of the pandemic — he was not tested for the coronavirus as testing guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not initially include those who were exhibiting pneumonia-like symptoms with unknown origins. Only those who had recently traveled or had exposure to someone with COVID-19 were recommended to get tested.
It's been more than a year and eight months since the hospital has been COVID-free, according to a release.
"As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to drop in the community and more people get vaccines, the hospital has had a decline in the number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19," Doctors Hosptial said in a statement. "Today’s news is very encouraging and uplifting."
It's been almost two weeks since Florida was, on average, reporting more than 2,000 new COVID-19 infections every single day. It's even lower than that right now.
Data produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as provided by the state Department of Health appear to show Florida is, yet again, in a bit of cooling-off period at this point in the pandemic. The daily case average is nowhere near in excess of 20,000 as seen earlier this summer and far off from January's peak of 15,000 daily cases.
The early impact of the delta variant, increased vaccine coverage and more widespread immunity among those who fell ill with the virus all are reasons health experts say are contributing to Florida's lower COVID caseload.
