Miami, Florida – According to Jackson Health Systems CEO Carlos Migoya, 95 percent of COVID-19 patients in South Florida are not vaccinated. On Sunday COVID hospitalizations continue to climb, he said.
The dangerous and contagious Delta leads to more people in hospitals. Over the past seven days in Florida, COVID-19 hospitalizations jumped a staggering 65 percent. A majority of those are people who have not been vaccinated.
According to health experts, this is called a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” as vaccine hesitancy remains strong in some populations.
“Forty-nine percent of our variants are Delta variants in Miami-Dade County, just two months ago it was two percent,” Migoya said, adding the Colombian variant now accounts for 10 percent of Jackson Memorial Covid patients
“Because of the travel between Colombia and Miami,” he added. “Miami is a very different place that gets a lot of these variants in front of us.”
73,000 new cases were reported in the past week, according to the Florida Department of Health. That’s seven times more than just one month ago.
The surge is prompting conversations within the White House and CDC about another mask-wearing guidance, even for those vaccinated.
Migoya said he is hopeful this surge will go down soon, likely within three weeks.
According to the White House, vaccination rates have actually gone up 14 percent in the past week.
