{"id":13288,"date":"2021-07-14T15:59:48","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T19:59:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=13288"},"modified":"2021-07-14T16:00:04","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T20:00:04","slug":"polk-county-health-leaders-warn-about-covid-19-spike-in-cases-and-hospitalizations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2021\/07\/14\/polk-county-health-leaders-warn-about-covid-19-spike-in-cases-and-hospitalizations\/","title":{"rendered":"Polk County health leaders warn about COVID-19 spike in cases and hospitalizations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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While most masks are off and hugs and handshakes are back, COVID-19 continues to spread in Polk County, especially to those who have not been vaccinated, local health leaders said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a general feeling in society that we\u2019re post-COVID,\u201d said Scott Sjoblom, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Health in Polk County. \u201cWe are not post-COVID. We are continuing to see cases increase.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polk County racked up\u00a0687 new cases<\/a>\u00a0in the first week of July, an increase of 26% in one week, according to Sjoblom.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cMost of the new cases [are] under the age of 45, and generally that\u2019s because that population is the group that is less likely to be vaccinated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifty percent of people who are eligible to get the COVID-19 vaccine have received the vaccine in Polk County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s good, but it\u2019s not enough,\u201d Sjoblom said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of Tuesday morning, Lakeland Regional Health was treating 82 patients for COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ninety-nine percent of them are unvaccinated, according to the hospital\u2019s chief medical informatics officer and chief quality officer at Lakeland Regional Health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cI think it\u2019s a slightly younger population we\u2019re seeing,\u201d Dr. Hal Escowitz said. \u201cRight now in the ICU, we have four people under 40 years old, which is very disheartening to see.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Escowitz, the hospital was treating between 35-40 patients for COVID-19 a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re relaxing too quickly,\u201d Lakeland Mayor Bill Mutz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mutz is watching as the county\u2019s positivity rate, the percentage of COVID-19 tests that come back positive, rise from 3% to nearly 9% in recent weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are probably a little quick to focus on our rights, and not enough on the consideration and health of others,\u201d said Mutz when asked about why this was happening in Polk County.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While most masks are off and hugs and handshakes are back, COVID-19 continues to spread in Polk County, especially to those who have not been vaccinated, local health leaders said.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[797],"class_list":["post-13288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-spike-in-cases-and-hospitalizations"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}