As of today, Lee Health has:
– 629 COVID-19 patients isolated in our hospitals (inpatient).
– Of these patients, 8 of them are children under the age of 18.
– Since Friday, we’ve had 226 new COVID-19 hospital admissions and 175 COVID-19 discharges.
– Currently, 52% of our ventilators and 23% of our ICU rooms are available for use. We have 72 COVID-19 patients on ventilators and 94 in the intensive care unit.
– Current census is at 94% of staffed operational bed capacity.
– Since the start of the pandemic, we have lost 841 patients inside our hospitals to COVID-19, including 22 since Friday.
OTHER UPDATES:
Lee Health has contracted with Curative to operate a COVID-19 testing site at its Lee Convenient Care clinic at 4771 S Cleveland Avenue in Fort Myers. Today, a four-lane drive-thru opened at the site to help meet the demand for testing as COVID surges in our community. Appointments can be booked at www.curative.com.
Lee Health emergency departments continue to see a high volume of patients. We ask the community to seek COVID testing at a designated testing site if you are not experiencing a medical emergency. Please visit www.leehealth.org for a list of alternate testing locations.
Lee Health is very pleased the Food and Drug Administration has granted full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for those who are 16 years old and older.
Getting vaccinated is the best defense we have against the coronavirus. Lee Health’s vaccination clinic is located inside Gulf Coast Medical Center. It’s open Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 7:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. You can walk in or book an appointment online. There is no cost for the COVID-19 vaccine.
At this time the booster is only for people who are immunocompromised. You can visit LeeHealth.org to schedule your third shot, if you meet this criteria. We expect the FDA to approve it in late September for everyone who has been vaccinated eight months after their initial vaccination. We will continue to keep the community updated.