DEADLY OUTBREAK

COVID-19 Kills 18 at Florida Psychiatric Hospital

The facility is now transferring some patients to another hospital.

A coronavirus outbreak at Florida’s state psychiatric hospital has killed at least 18 patients, and almost 30 more staffers and residents are infected. The Tallahassee Democrat reports that the situation at the Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee has gotten so bad that the facility is transferring an unspecified number of patients to a different psychiatric hospital in Jacksonville. Workers and patients’ families have complained about conditions in Chattahoochee from the start of the pandemic. “I feel like the state failed him,” Lindsey Pettiford said of her nephew, 34-year-old Fabian Pettiford, who died of COVID-19 there in July.