Florida hospitals explode with younger COVID-19 victims

• Florida hospitals are being occupied by young patients amidst the delta variant that is wreaking havoc in the state.
• Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) continues to resist recommendations from health officials to mandate mask wearing and social distancing.
• Patients are younger and sicker than those who were initially under ICU care during the first wave.

Florida hospitals are being occupied by young patients amidst the delta variant that is wreaking havoc in Florida.

As Changing America previously reported, Florida is one of the fastest accelerating places infected by the delta variant.

While Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) continues to resist recommendations from health officials to mandate mask wearing and social distancing, youth in the Sunshine State are being struck with the virus, the Miami Herald reported.

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A manager of one of the intensive care units (ICU) at Jackson Memorial, Alix Zacharski, noted that patients are younger and sicker than those who were initially under ICU care during the first wave.

"The youngest patient, a 27-year-old woman on a ventilator, had to be resuscitated with a bag valve mask after her blood oxygen saturation levels crashed,” the Herald reported.

"On a recent weekday afternoon, Zacharski was working in the ICU when a 27-year-old patient's vital signs crashed, triggering an alarm on a computer monitor in the nurses' station. Her blood oxygen saturation levels had dropped suddenly from 95 to 64. Normal readings usually range from 95 to 100, and anything below 90 is considered low," the Herald reported.

“As the patient's heart rate accelerated, Zacharski and her colleagues rushed to the patient's room and removed the ventilator from her throat. Then they applied a bag valve mask, pumping the air bag by hand to force oxygen into the patient’s lungs.”

At a press event in Miami on Tuesday, DeSantis defended unvaccinated people who were getting sick from COVID-19 and said the media was being "judgmental," Business Insider reported.

"When somebody contracts a highly transmissible airborne virus, they're viewed as having done something wrong," he said. "And that's just not the way you do it when people come in, you treat them. Are you going to sit there and criticize, or are we going to try to treat, and try to help the folks? Nobody's trying to get ill here."

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