Hospital System Admitted 1,600+ Patients Wednesday: Report

BROWARD COUNTY, FL — Broward County’s Memorial Healthcare System admitted more than 1,600 patients for overnight stays Wednesday.

Usually, the healthcare chain’s six hospitals don’t have more than 1,400 inpatients at a time, the Associated Press reported.

More than 500 or about one-third of these patients have COVID-19, CBS4 reported.

To accommodate this influx in coronavirus patients, the healthcare system has added 250 beds, putting them in cafeterias, auditoriums and conference rooms, reports said. Memorial Healthcare has also suspended elective surgeries.

“We are seeing a surge that we have not seen before. We have more patients than we have had before. The numbers are unprecedented. So, the idea is to redirect services,” Dr. Marc Napp, the healthcare system’s chief medical officer, told CBS4.

He expects the number of COVID-19 patients treated by the hospital system to continue to rise, reports said.

According to the Florida Department of Health’s COVID-19 Weekly Situation Report, more than 9,000 people in Broward County tested positive for COVID-19 during the week of July 23-29. The county’s new case positivity rate for that same period was 14 percent.

In nearby Miami-Dade County, nearly 16,000 new coronavirus cases were reported during this week with a positivity rate of 12.1 percent.

Statewide more than 110,000 cases were reported between July 23-29. Florida had a positivity rate of 18.1 percent.