Florida doctors urge DeSantis to focus on rising COVID-19 cases

In the last two weeks, COVID cases in Volusia County are up more than 50%, with almost all of the new cases coming from people who are not vaccinated.

The county is hardly alone.

Across the state, hospitals are reporting a spike in cases as variants of the virus spread, raising concern that another wave is already here.

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“We continue to work day in and day out to protect people and save lives,” says cardiologist Dr. Bernard Ashby. “We are greatly concerned with the number of COVID 19 cases we are seeing in the state.”

On Thursday, doctors with a group called the Committee to Protect Health Care held a virtual press conference to urge Gov. Ron DeSantis to take a more proactive approach to encourage vaccinations and measures to slow the spread of the virus, saying the governor’s politicization of the virus, including attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci, are sending the wrong message.

“COVID-19 is a preventable disease, like measles, but herd immunity is quickly slipping out of our reach,” says immunologist Dr. Mona Mangat. “A quarter of the population is refusing to get the vaccine and our state is lagging behind in vaccines, with less than half of our state fully vaccinated.”

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“Just from this media advisory, it appears they aren’t very well-informed about what Governor DeSantis has been doing for the past 7 months. They wanted to “call on Gov. Ron DeSantis to start seriously encouraging Floridians to get vaccinated to prevent more spreading and mutations.” In fact, the Governor has made countless public appearances all over the state to encourage vaccination, and he has spoken positively of the vaccines in public remarks nearly 100 times this year,” DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, wrote in a prepared statement.

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Video: AdventHealth limiting visitors, certain elective surgeries due to rising COVID-19 cases AdventHealth officials said they are limiting visitations and deferring new elective surgeries that require hospitalizations due to increasing COVID-19 cases. (Angela Jacobs, WFTV.com)

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