South Floridians scramble to find medicine, test kits as state sees surge in COVID-19: "It just blew up"

MIAMI — Vic Abbate was pretty surprised when he tested positive for COVID-19 last month.

"I had fever," he said. "I felt bad for a couple days. It made you feel real lousy, real weak, you know, and then finally, kind of went away."

Wayne Linder, the owner of Pill Box Pharmacy, told CBS News Miami that he had been receiving a spike in calls about Paxlovid, a medicine used to treat COVID.

"It just blew up over the last few weeks, just patients calling, 'Do you have Paxlovid?'" Linder said.

He said they're trying to keep up with demand.

"I mean, we dispensed more packs of Paxlovid in the last couple of weeks than we did in the last six months," he added.

People were also scrambling to find COVID test kits.

"People will come in and saying, you know, 'We can't get test kits, anywhere! Oh, my God, you have test kits!' and then they would purchase the test kits here," Linder said.

Doctor Hany Atallah, the chief medical officer at Jackson Memorial Hospital, said they had a peak of 116 COVID cases, it's down to 100 on Friday with 35 people hospitalized.

"We don't think that there's going to be a surge like we saw in the past," he said.

JMH reports their cases doubled from 49 to 100 in 3 weeks and Baptist Health told CBS News Miami that 26 people are hospitalized.

Atallah said prevention should help keep those numbers down.

"So you know, hand hygiene cover your mouth when you have to cough, cough or sneeze, you know, stay away from others if you're sick, those are things that are going to keep everyone healthy and prevent the spread of infection," he said.

Health officials expect the number to also rise when kids go back to school next month.