With over 2,000 patients hospitalized and hundreds in the ICU, an infectious disease expert mentioned that Miami is currently the epicenter of the coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic while comparing the South Florida metropolitan area to the city where the outbreak started.
"What we were seeing in Wuhan -- six months ago, five months ago -- now we are there," Lilian Abbo, with the Jackson Health System, claimed during a news conference hosted on Monday by the Miami-Dade County mayor, as reported by CNN.
COVID-19 in Miami
The city of Wuhan located in the Hubei province of China, which is the original epicenter of the deadly novel virus outbreak, went into a 76-day lockdown in late January following a deadly outbreak infected and killed many people. The first cases reported of the virus were first detected in Wuhan in the month of December, in 2019, and by mid-April, officials confirmed over 50,000 infections. Miami-Dade County has confirmed over 64,000 cases so far, as per the state data.
In the last 13 days, Miami-Dade County has witnessed a staggering rise in the number of coronavirus patients being hospitalized (68 percent), in the number of the Intensive Care Unit beds being used (69 percent) and are in the use of ventilators (109 percent), as reported by the Miami-Dade County Government reported.
Forty-eight Florida hospitals, which include eight in Miami-Dade, have touched the ICU capacity, as per the Agency for Health Care Administration. "We need your help as media communicators to help the community understand that we're just not repeating the same thing over and over just to give you trouble, we really need your help," Abbo mentioned, directing those comments to the reporters.
The deadly virus outbreak has created a major stir around the world in recent times infecting more than 13.1 million people globally and claimed the lives of over 573,000 people globally in more than 170 countries. The US is the worst affected country followed by Brazil and India.
