Florida is now reporting an average of 227 COVID-19 deaths each day — a state record and by far the highest count in the nation. The state’s daily death count, is fueled largely by the highly transmissible delta variant, and has increased by 613 percent in the past seven days.
Against this morbid backdrop, Governor Ron DeSantis continues to battle with school districts who have chosen to follow Center for Disease Control guidelines recommending that all school aged children over age two wear masks while in public by issuing an executive order barring school districts from being able to mandate mask. Florida's situation is so dire that one doctor recently described it as “a crisis of unprecedented proportions.”
This week, about 75 doctors and hospital employees in South Florida held a public event to urge people to get vaccinated, saying the strain placed on the state’s health-care system from the unvaccinated population has left them exhausted.
Dr. Nitesh Paryani, a Tampa oncologist, urged Americans to get vaccinated, calling it "the best tool we have" to overcome the pandemic.
"We're seeing in the hospitals, greater than 90 percent of the people that are admitted in the ICUs are unvaccinated. There is no question that the vaccine is the best option we have. It is also the cheapest option we have. It is the most effective, and there's really no reason that people should be avoiding the vaccine," he said.
"There's not a single patient that we've had to intubate because of a complication from the vaccine. The people we're intubating, the people that are on life support, the people that are dying are the ones that are not vaccinated."