Lee Health sees slight bump in admissions as reopening begins

Reporter: Anika Henanger Writer: Jackie Winchester
Published:
Credit: WINK News

A warning from Lee Health on Tuesday: doctors said they’re seeing a slight bump in admissions and will likely see a bigger one later on as more people begin leaving their homes.

They emphasized the bump is small from the past few days, but those are the same days we’ve seen more people heading out as the state relaxes its safer-at-home order.

Lee Health is telling people to keep their guard up because the coronavirus is just as dangerous as it was before reopening began.

“I need to remind our residents … we have no treatment for COVID-19. Nothing has changed from three months ago. Nothing,” said Alex Daneshmand, D.O., MBA, FAAP, Lee Health chief quality and patient safety officer.

The only change Daneshmand sees is that people are more informed and better able to protect themselves and others.

Daneshmand said we don’t need to drop our precautions – we need to boost them.

“The news of possible relaxation of some of those restrictions that the governor has kinda encouraged people to take a little bit more risk of going out,” Daneshmand said.

Cellphone data shows that states that are still on lockdown are seeing a drop in social distancing.

“My concern on this is that we don’t go too fast and we start having a higher number of deaths, higher number of cases,” Daneshmand said.

He said the value of the phased reopening is that we can measure the impact of each phase and adjust.

“I think we gotta be ready and the whole community has to be ready that they may actually have to go backward in some of those restrictions.”

But he said that is up to us, that in reopening, we need to remember the best tool we have right now to protect one another is taking precautions.

“It all depends on how much really our community heeds the call,” he said.

Part of that, Lee Health said, is calling your doctor or 911 if you need to.

Doctors are seeing patients with symptoms that patients never imagined are COVID-19 related, like heart attacks or muscle pain, and they’re testing positive.

They ask you to please get medical help if you need it, not just for a fever or a cough.

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