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‘Things are not getting better ... they are getting worse,’ fire chief says

Palm Beach Post - 7/7/2020

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Palm Beach County children are showing long-term lung damage from COVID-19, two firefighters are in intensive care and hospital admissions, along with cases, are spiking, two top county officials said Tuesday, painting a grim picture of the continuing toll of pandemic.

"Certainly, all indications are things are not getting better, they are not getting steady, they are getting worse," Palm Beach County Fire Rescue Chief Reginald Duren told county commissioners, adding that 109 firefighters are in quarantine.

His remarks came after Palm Beach County Health Director Dr. Alina Alonso said the county is failing to meet four of the six benchmarks that must be met to establish that the deadly coronavirus is under control.

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"This is spreading quite rapidly throughout Florida and this virus is going to be around for a very long time," she said.

Alonso's frank but disturbing account of the continuing march of the virus came as state health officials reported that an additional 7,347 people were diagnosed statewide, including 396 more in Palm Beach County.

Also, while the number of deaths have declined in recent weeks even as the number of cases have skyrocketed, 63 deaths were reported overnight, including 20 in Palm Beach County, a one-day record.

The state's death toll, including non-Florida residents, now stands at 3,943, including 577 in Palm Beach County.

With 213,794 cases, Florida has the third highest number of confirmed infections in the nation, behind only New York and California. In Palm Beach County, 17,638 people have been diagnosed with the highly contagious respiratory disease.

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Alonso disputed Gov. Ron DeSantis' continuing contention that the rising percentage of people testing positive is simply a product of more people being swabbed.

"It's not just because we're testing more people," she said of the rising positivity rates in both the state and the county. The rate shows the extent to which the virus is infecting people throughout the state, she said.

On Tuesday, more than 19 percent of the 48,500 lab tests reported statewide were positive. That is the highest percentage in two weeks and likely the highest since the pandemic began sweeping through the state in March.

State health officials said a positivity rate of higher than 10 percent is cause for concern. The rate hasn't dipped below 10 percent in more than two weeks.

In Palm Beach County, 15.5 percent of the roughly 2,400 lab tests reported on Tuesday were positive. The percentage hasn't dropped below 10 percent in more than a week, state health officials said.

Alonso also disputed DeSantis' claim that young people can get the virus with no ill-effects.

"When we take X-rays of kids, even if they don't have symptoms, there are changes in the lungs," Alonso said. "We have no idea what the long-term damage will look like."

Further, she said, two children in the county have been diagnosed with multisystem inflammatory syndrome, a potentially fatal disease. Two 17-year-olds and a child under the age of 14 have died elsewhere in the state, health officials reported.

Data shows that the virus is continuing to attack children. A eye-popping 29 percent of the 1,083 children under the age of 18 who have been tested in the county learned they have the disease, she said.

While the number of kids who have been tested is low, the increasing number of positive tests is cause for concern, Alonso said.

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Hospital admissions in the county have also increased steadily in the last month with more patients requiring treatment in intensive care units, she said. On June 23, 15 percent of patients were in intensive care. On Monday, the number had doubled to 30 percent.

Unlike hospital officials in Miami-Dade County, who have canceled elective surgeries to make sure enough beds are available to care for COVID-19 patients, Alonso said county hospital officials say they have plenty of capacity.

"We want to make sure our hospitals don't have to go into surge mode," she said.

The good news, she said, is that during the months the pandemic has raged across the globe, doctors have learned how to treat it.

"They're using many new tools," she said. Instead of putting people on ventilators, they have discovered other methods that are equally effective. "They realize that patients can survive with much lower oxygen levels," she said.

Still, she said, county residents have to continue to be vigilant. They have to practice social distancing, wear masks, wash their hands and not go to work when they are sick.

"That's the only tool we have in a pandemic ... and it does work," she said of the simple measures people can take. "When we started this, we were able to flatten the curve and we can do it again."

Still, she said, the disease isn't going to go away anytime soon.

"It will not be over for at least a year," she said. "We have a long way to go."

jmusgrave@pbpost.com

@pbpcourts

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##IFRAME_1##<strong>For more information:</strong>

Florida Department of Health coronavirus web page

CDC coronavirus web page

– Florida DOH coronavirus hotline (8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday) is 866-779-6121 or email COVID-19@flhealth.gov

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