ORLANDO, Fla. — AdventHealth officials said they are limiting visitations and deferring new elective surgeries that require hospitalizations due to increasing COVID-19 cases.
Officials said those changes are due to the hospital system proactively moving to yellow status.
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“We are now seeing about the fastest rate of increase that we’ve seen during the course of this entire pandemic,” said Dr. Neil Finkler, chief clinical officer with AdventHealth.
That status means non-COVID-19 patients are limited to two visitors at a time, COVID-19 patients age 18 and older can have one visitor per day and those under 18 can have two adult visitors per day.
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While there are no capacity issues right now, and the hospital is well supplied, Finkler said moving to yellow can help prevent future constraints given this rise.
“We’ll continue to monitor this situation and we will make necessary changes based on how things change based on our COVID numbers and our capacity,” Finkler said.
Hospital officials said outpatient procedures, labs and pediatric surgeries will continue as scheduled.
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Officials said they believe the highly contagious delta variant is to blame for AdventHealth’s more than 200 case jump in COVID-19 patients in a little over a month, nearly all of them unvaccinated.
The hospital previously elevated its status to yellow in January and then red within a week due to a spike in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.
AdventHealth officials said they have not decided yet on requiring employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
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