Hospital bed shortage
Palm Beach County has declared a state of emergency to improve a "disturbing shortage of hospital resources" for Covid 19 patients.
Officials said the state of emergency may allow Palm Beach County to bring in additional medical personnel from other parts of the state and country. It may also direct the private health care system to transmit real-time data regarding COVID-19 hospital bed availability.
Darcy Davis, the CEO of the Health Care District of Palm Beach County, said there's currently no way to see which local hospital ICU wards are specifically accepting COVID-19 patients. "There are so many patients, it's overwhelming a lot of the hospitals," Davis said.
Palm Beach County had 9,159 new COVID-19 cases between Aug. 6 and 12, and the county's daily COVID-19 positivity rate was 17.8% during that time.
Between May 28 and June 3, the county only had 719 new cases and a daily positivity rate of 3.2%
