Ryan Nicol
The Palm Beach County Commission approved a motion Tuesday declaring a state of emergency because of COVID-19. But that declaration will face an automatic end date thanks to a measure approved by Republican lawmakers last Session.
The county-level motion, introduced by Commissioner Melissa McKinlay, could allow Palm Beach to pull additional health care workers from other areas in the state to help the region’s current hospital crisis. The emergency declaration would also allow officials to obtain more information quickly from hospitals regarding capacity.
“We do not have the resources available right now in our community to address the needs in certain parts of our community,” McKinlay said Tuesday.
Needing help, the county has now moved to emergency status. But a bill approved in the the GOP-led Legislature in April and later signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, limits the county’s order to six weeks at most. Republican lawmakers approved a larger bill banning vaccine passports. That legislation also contained limitations on the ability of local officials to operate under a prolonged state of emergency.
Tuesday’s vote on McKinlay’s motion was unanimous.
There are signs that case counts may be peaking in Palm Beach County and the South Florida area more widely. But if those trends hold, it’s still likely hospitals will remain strained for weeks. That’s because individuals can enter or remain in hospitals for days or weeks after infections. Even if cases begin falling by late August or early September, hospitals will likely still be overwhelmed.
McKinlay has been vocal about the lack of bed space in hospitals in recent days. One hospital, Lakeside Medical Center in Belle Glade, has run out of ICU bed space, prompting hospital officials to call around to other hospitals in the state for help housing patients. In a post on Twitter, McKinlay wrote that “not a single one could take Lakeside’s COVID patients.”
