COVID hospitalizations trend down but not among the young

On Monday 13 patients died from COVID-19 in Lee Health Hospitals.

As of Tuesday morning, Lee Health currently has 525 COVID-19 patients admitted in their hospitals. Of those patients, 15 of them are children being treated at Golisano Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida.

During this current spike in COVID cases, kids are still sick now more than ever before.

Tami Anderson has been a nurse for 38 years and she takes care of the 15 children with COVID-19 now hospitalized at Golisano, and she said, “That’s more than we’ve ever seen. And these kids are sick ”

If you get to know Anderson a little more, you learn she is a woman of faith. So we asked what she prayed for these days.

LINK: Hospitalizations Associated with COVID-19 Among Children and Adolescents

“Probably just about everything you can think of,” she said. “Every single day God puts me in the place for somebody that needs me, and whatever it is they need is what I’m called to do.”

What she’s called to do is not an easy task, watching parents sob.

She delivers tough news to parents of young, often critical, patients.

More and more these days, the tough news includes tough images. Anderson explained one of the hardest moments for a mom and dad in the pediatric ICU is to see an x-ray that gives a poor prognosis.

LINK: Trends in COVID-19 Cases, ER Visits, and Hospital Admissions Among Children

“The COVID pneumonia x-ray, what it looks like, they call it broken glass,” Andreson explained. “Where you see a whole lot of everything except for open areas where air is exchanging, and when you have to sit down with a patient’s parent and show them how devastating the disease is in their lungs… it’s not news anybody wants to hear it’s terrifying.”

Since Friday, Lee Health had 209 new COVID-19 hospital admissions and 217 COVID-19 discharges.

42% of their ventilators and 3% of ICU rooms are available for use. There are 75 COVID-19 patients on ventilators and 88 in the intensive care unit.

As of Tuesday morning, Lee Health’s census was at 97% of staffed operational bed capacity.

Watch the news conference again in the player below or click here.