Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said the next 24-48 hours are pivotal to the county as coronavirus cases continue to spike. Demings said the county was in “crisis mode.”
Dr. Victor Herrera with Adventhealth said a vast majority of their COVID-19 patients who were not vaccinated, several ill people have expressed regret when it was too late.
“Right before he was about to be incubated, ‘I wish I had received a vaccine,’” Herrera said the patient told him. “Now they are very sick in the hospital, they are about to be incubated, they and their families have thoughts related to if they made the right decision [about the vaccine.]”
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CBS News spoke with Curtis Sanderlin, 62, at UF Health in Jacksonville. Sanderlin had been hospitalized with COVID-19 following the death of his wife.
Sanderlin told CBS News that he wasn’t against getting a vaccine, he just never got around to it.
“Take it, take it. Do the right thing,” Sanderlin said.
Orange County health officials said hospitalizations don’t rise until two weeks after a spike in case, adding those numbers are expected to rise.
Demings said that unvaccinated people don’t want the burden of knowing they contributed to infecting someone else.
“Or you are the cause of a loved one dying because you could have gotten protected, and you didn’t,” Demings said.
Orange County said about 62 percent of all eligible residents have received at least one dose of a vaccine.
Dr. Raul Pino with the Florida Department of Health in Orange County said that 100 percent of the people who tested positive in the county on Friday had never received a vaccine.