As omicron variant spreads, Miami-Dade hospitals ordered to report bed availability

In November, as Miami-Dade County’s COVID-19 pandemic seemed to ease, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava lifted a July emergency order requiring daily bed inventories and COVID patient counts from hospitals across the county.

This week, as the omicron variant sweeps across the world, Levine Cava reinstated the order, with the first COVID patient counts due on Friday.

“We’re doing everything possible to make sure we’re responding to this,” she said Wednesday.

COVID is spreading again in Miami-Dade, with 7% of tests administered across the county coming back positive for the virus. That “positivity” rate was 1% just 30 days ago.

While few omicron cases have been reported in Florida, Rachel Johnson, the county’s communications director, said regular COVID tests of the county’s wastewater system have detected the new variant.

Levine Cava’s Dec. 14 order resumes the daily reports Miami-Dade has imposed on hospitals off and on since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020. Levine Cava briefly canceled the reports in May, then revived them in late July as the delta variant sparked a surge in COVID infections. The last reporting order was canceled Nov. 4.

Reviving the county’s reporting requirements should lead to the resumption of daily hospital data summaries on Miami-Dade’s COVID-19 dashboard.

The order requires hospitals to report total COVID-19 patients, as well as how many had been vaccinated against the virus and how many are being treated in intensive-care units. The order also requires hospitals to provide the number of available ICU beds and the number of available ventilators.

This story was originally published December 15, 2021 at 7:38 PM.