More coronavirus patients discharged from Southwest Florida hospitals

Another sign of progress in Southwest Florida: more people are getting released from the hospital.

Lee Health said they’ve discharged 104 patients, including 11 on Monday. Over the weekend, nurses cheered as one of their own got to go home.

NCH Healthcare System has discharged dozens, too.

So what will this do to our curve over the next few weeks?

Doctors say the positive trend means we’re flattening the curve and our hospitals will not be overwhelmed with patients at the peak.

“Today we see lower hospitalizations, and it’s a direct reflection of the mitigation measures we put into place two weeks prior,” said Dr. Bindu Mayi at the Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine, Nova Southeastern University.

Everyone has been working hard to try and prevent the spread.

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday he has seen progress in the number of hospitalizations across the state.

“The bed availability throughout the state of Florida is about 42 percent. To put that in perspective, their beds were about 12 percent,” the governor said.

Lee Health and NCH have seen the capacity increase, too.

“We have increased our capacity, and we can support and increase in beds up to 30 percent if needed,” said Paul Hiltz, president and CEO of NCH.

“Current bed capacity remains at 55 percent, with 9 percent of those being COVID-19 patients,” said Dr. Larry Antonucci, president and CEO of Lee Health.

Mayi said this is a good sign.

“What this is doing is it’s spreading that curve instead of having a peak where we have all the numbers all at once.”

Mayi said that even though we are seeing good numbers, we can’t relax on the mitigations we’ve been working on or the curve could go back up and more people could end up in the hospital.