{"id":13365,"date":"2021-07-16T17:47:41","date_gmt":"2021-07-16T21:47:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=13365"},"modified":"2021-07-16T17:47:47","modified_gmt":"2021-07-16T21:47:47","slug":"covid-cases-more-than-double-hospitalizations-rising-again-in-polk-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2021\/07\/16\/covid-cases-more-than-double-hospitalizations-rising-again-in-polk-county\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID cases more than double, hospitalizations rising again in Polk County"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The number of new COVID-19 cases in Polk County has more than doubled since last week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Florida Department of Health\u00a0reported\u00a0Friday there were 1,424 new infections in Polk between July 9 and July\u00a015, versus 687 cases reported a week prior. This is the fifth consecutive week the county’s infections have continued to increase, the numbers growing at an accelerated rate. It\u00a0brings the county’s total to 74,589 infections reported or approximately 19% of county’s residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center had 108 patients hospitalized for COVID as of noon on Friday, Terry Hamilton, LRH’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, told The Ledger via email. That’s doubled from 50 before the Fourth of July weekend. Three patients currently require the assistance of a ventilator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Over the last few weeks, the number of patients with COVID-19 being treated at Lakeland Regional Health has steadily risen, and we are seeing a younger demographic in many cases,” Hamilton said. “We suspect the Delta variant with its ease in spreading is causing many of these infections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Statewide, new cases nearly doubled week-to-week, jumping to 45,603 new infections this week. Nearly 20% of the nation’s new coronavirus infections are happening in Florida, one of four states seeing a significant rise in cases, as The Hill reports.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Polk and the state saw upticks in their weekly positivity rates among those being tested for the virus. Florida’s weekly positive rate increased from 7.8% to 11.5% this week, breaking above the 10% threshold often cited during the pandemic for wide community spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polk’s weekly positive rate spiked from 8.7% up to 13.3%, nearly five percentage points. That rate is among the highest positivity rates seen in the county since vaccinations began. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One positive indicator for Polk is an increasing number of residents have chosen to be vaccinated against the virus. There were 3,430 people who received a shot last week, up more than 15% from a week prior. It brings Polk’s total vaccinated population to roughly 51%, according to the state health department. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Improving the county’s vaccination rates should help reduce any burden on Lakeland Regional Health, which is seeing new infections primarily among the unvaccinated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Most of the patients we are treating have not been vaccinated for COVID-19, so our message continues to be, vaccinations work,” Hamilton said. “We encourage those unvaccinated to make a special effort to get the COVID-19 vaccine to protect themselves and others from the virus.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Florida continues to see the number of vaccinations drop. The state had 224,326 people receive a shot last week, down more than 5% from the week prior. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The number of new COVID-19 cases in Polk County has more than doubled since last week.  The Florida Department of Health\u00a0reported\u00a0Friday there were 1,424 new infections in Polk between July 9… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13366,"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":[823],"class_list":["post-13365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-covid-cases-more-than-double"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13365","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=13365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}