Flagler Hospital in St. Augustine reported 67 COVID-19 patients on Monday afternoon, its highest number since the pandemic began, according to spokeswoman Gina Mangus. 

Four of those patients required ventilation as of Monday. 

On Thursday, the facility reported 53 COVID-19 patients. The hospital's previous peak was 59 hospitalized in January, according to Mangus. 

On Monday morning, the hospital decided to postpone this week certain inpatient procedures that were scheduled in the hospital's main operating rooms. 

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Hospitals are battling steep increases in new COVID-19 cases, with Florida leading the nation. On Friday, the most recent day with complete statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Florida added 13,256 new cases — figures comparable to the disease's prior local peak in January, when the state regularly recorded 10,000 or more infections per day.

Leading causes for the current wave are the highly contagious delta variant and a large population of unvaccinated people. The CDC is weighing revising its COVID-19 guidelines to recommend that even fully vaccinated individuals wear masks in public. 

"Flagler Hospital is continuing to see a growing number of patients presenting with COVID-19 in our emergency care center, as well as an uptick in patients requiring hospitalization due to COVID-19," Mangus wrote in an email to The Record.

The hospital is monitoring the situation, as well as its capacity and staffing, and will adjust procedures as needed, according to Mangus. 

"We remain incredibly proud of our team members, who have demonstrated the highest level of compassion, commitment, competence and resilience throughout the COVID-19 pandemic," she wrote. "Our community can feel confident that we are here for them, and we are providing the highest level of safe, quality care."

The hospital had enough personal protective equipment, ventilator capacity and COVID-19 testing supplies as of Monday. 

Flagler Hospital's lab doesn't analyze for variants. It wasn't clear as of Monday how much of an effect the delta variant is having on the hospital.

"Specimens are sent to the Florida Department of Healthy laboratory for such analysis upon request. We have validated that the vast majority of COVID-19 cases we are seeing are occurring in unvaccinated people," Mangus wrote. "Our team continues to advocate for and encourage vaccinations." 

According to Mangus, 74% of Flagler Health+ employees and community physicians are vaccinated. 

Flagler Health+ has a voluntary vaccination policy that it established in collaboration with its "interprofessional COVID-19 vaccination team" and ethics committee. 

"One of the determining factors in establishing the current policy is that COVID-19 vaccines are being dispensed under emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration and have not received final FDA approval," according to Mangus. "As with all of our policies, we will continue to monitor, evaluate and make adjustments as deemed appropriate."

The Mayo Clinic on Monday announced updates to its employee policies. 

The Rochester, Minn.-based hospital business is requiring all of its employees, including those at its Jacksonville campus, to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Sept. 17.

Staff who decline must complete "'education modules,' which are training videos, and will be required to wear masks and socially distance when on campus," according to Mayo.

Staff who do not comply — by getting a vaccination or completing the training videos, wearing masks and maintaining social distancing when on campus — "can be placed on unpaid leave," Kevin Punsky, communications manager at the Jacksonville campus, said.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced plans Monday to make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for health-care personnel ― including doctors, dentists, optometrists, podiatrists and registered nurses ― who provide care for the VA. 

At a time when COVID-19 rates are increasing, the state is providing little information. 

The Florida Department of Health on June 4 abruptly discontinued its daily coronavirus updates, which provided data on the number of new cases, deaths, positivity rates, vaccination rates and hospitalizations. At the same time, the Agency for Healthcare Administration, which tracked COVID-19 hospitalizations by county daily, stopped providing reports.

Now, unless a hospital system readily provides the data to the public, the only way to obtain data is through federal reporting, which isn’t updated daily and often doesn’t provide breakdowns by hospital. 

Recent data is available from those sources. 

In the seven days leading up to July 23, the number of COVID-19 admissions per 100 beds in St. Johns County hospitals increased 130%,   according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, which updates county specific hospital data once per week. In Flagler County, that number increased 136% and in Volusia it increased 36%.

As of Friday, 60% of Florida's eligible population had received a COVID-19 vaccine, up by just 1% from the previous week, according to the Florida Department of Health's most recent update. This leaves 40% of the eligible population vulnerable to the virus, including the highly contagious delta variant. 

The Florida Department of Health offers an online COVID-19 vaccine-location finder. Visit floridahealthcovid19.gov/vaccines/vaccine-locator. 

The 24-hour COVID-19 Call Center is at 1-866-779-6121. People can also ask questions via email at COVID-19@flhealth.gov.

― Beth Reese Cravey of The Florida Times-Union contributed to this report.