To relieve pressure on Pinellas County hospitals, the county and state are working to open a skilled-nursing center to house up to 120 patients who contract the coronavirus.
During a Pinellas County Commission meeting on Thursday, county administrator Barry Burton said the county and the Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County are working to finalize plans on a “super-skilled nursing facility” that will house COVID-19 patients who do not require critical medical care.
Burton told commissioners that he didn’t want to reveal the location until all plans are finalized. He also said the county’s face mask requirement is helping to drive down the positivity rates of COVID-19 tests, although the numbers overall continue to increase.
“We still have widespread community spread,” Burton said. “It is having an impact.”
Dr. Ulyee Choe, director of the Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County, said the rolling average for positivity rates over the past seven days fell to 8 percent. He called for even more people to wear masks in public because the data shows that masks help to slow the virus spread.
“The mask ordinance and the closing of the bars has helped,” Choe said. “We don’t want to continue to strain the hospital system.”
Commissioner Charlie Justice asked Choe about a media report detailing faulty test numbers in Orlando. Choe said the problem came from smaller labs not reporting negative results, but he had few details. The public, he said, should focus on the “trend lines,” because those numbers are “more important” spread over time.
Justice said people who don’t believe the virus is real will use the Orlando example to downplay the severity of the pandemic, adding: “It’s important to hear what you said.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Angus Jameson, the medical director for Pinellas County Emergency Medical Services, said the health care and emergency medical system in the county are stressed as more people fall ill with the virus.
Last month, only eight people in Pinellas County needed ventilators to fight the virus, but on Wednesday, 54 patients were on ventilators, Jameson said, noting that hospitals are seeing the impact of the increased cases. Hospitals are again canceling or postponing elective surgeries, he said.
“In the hospitals, clearly the health care system is stressed at this point from a physical standpoint, but also frankly from a human standpoint,” Jameson said. “Your health care workers are exhausted. They’ve been at this for months. It is incredibly hard to care for patients with COVID.”
On Thursday, the Tampa Bay area recorded a record-high 72 deaths, with 40 of them in Hillsborough County. The area also added 1,661 new cases. Previously, Pinellas County had the highest number of single-day deaths in the region with 26, recorded on Tuesday. Pinellas recorded 17 deaths on Thursday. Overall, Pinellas has had 12,368 cases and 297 deaths, according to state data.
As the cases continue to tax the hospital system, Commissioner Kathleen Peters asked about contract nurses, which she heard were walking out of the BayFront Health St. Petersburg hospital during shifts because the workers learned they could get paid higher hourly rates at other facilities.
Peters called it a “real problem” and questioned whether the county should alert the Florida attorney general about the practice. She also said the practice could harm patients.
“Did they just walk out and leave and go to another hospital because they could get paid more?” Peters asked. “Is that kind of what is going on? Is there price gouging going on?”
“Yes,” said Lourdes Benedict, an assistant county administrator, “that’s what the hospital reported.”
Replied Peters: “I think that’s a real problem. We can’t have nurses walking out in the middle of the shift when we have patients to take care of.”
Burton told commissioners that several hospital CEOs would address the group in an online meeting on Tuesday.
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