The AdventHealth Central Florida system is seeing a significant increase in younger people being admitted to its hospitals with COVID-19.
The average age of patients being admitted into the Orlando-area hospital system is 45 or 50 years old, according to Dr. Eduardo Oliveira, medical director of critical care services for AdventHealth.
He says the age range is down substantially from the beginning of the pandemic, when most people he administered care to were 65 and up.
“Which means that vaccinations work and work very well. At least in the elderly population,” he says.
He says that’s because there’s such a high rate of protection from the vaccines currently on the market.
“We have had very, very few vaccine failures that end up being admitted into the ICU. And when they do, they tend to be immunocompromised, where maybe the vaccination did not work as well as intended,” he says.
Oliveira says his patients range between 23 and 75 years old and that most of the young people he sees in the intensive care unit are unvaccinated.
As of Thursday, there were 430 people being treated for COVID-19 symptoms throughout the AdventHealth system, an uptick from last week.
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