NBC 6’s Marissa Bagg is in Miramar as cases and hospitalizations continue to surge in Florida.
Memorial Healthcare System is seeing hundreds of patients with COVID-19 across its hospital system, officials said Friday.
Memorial saw 420 patients with COVID-19 on Friday, with 55 of them in the ICU, Chief of Critical Care Medicine Dr. Aharon Sareli said in a news briefing. Eighty percent of those hospitalized with the most severe cases of COVID-19 cases are on ventilators.
Watch NBC6 free wherever you are
Out of the 55 in the ICU, only one of the patients is vaccinated, Sareli said.
Memorial has had to make "non-traditional" ICU and non-ICU spaces to treat COVID and non-COVID patients, Sareli said.
Get local news you need to know to start your day with NBC 6's News Headlines newsletter.
On Monday alone, more than 75 patients with the virus were admitted to hospitals within the system, the highest single-day spike.
Six weeks ago, there were less than 90 patients with COVID-19 in the Memorial Healthcare System, officials said.
“It’s very sad, to have someone dying in the ICU by themselves, without the touch of their family, without seeing a loved one," said Juana Mejia, COVID-19 ICU nurse manager.
Local
Earlier this week, Memorial updated its hospital visitor guidelines to "very high risk" and will only allow fully vaccinated visitors during designated hours.
The system's latest numbers show they are caring for 341 patients who are COVID-19 positive, with more than 98% of these patients being unvaccinated.
For more on Memorial Healthcare's visitation policy, click here.
