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Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, OUC Ask Residents To Continue Conserving Water As COVID Hospitalizations Remain High

Photo: Mayor Buddy Dyer
Photo: Mayor Buddy Dyer

The City of Orlando and OUC are reminding residents to continue to conserve water in order to combat a shortage of liquid oxygen. The oxygen is used by thousands of COVID-19 patients in local hospitals who struggle to breathe on their own. 

OUC says residents were conserving so much water on September 9th that the city hit an all-time low demand for water of 77 million gallons per day. But three days later on September 12th, those levels jumped back up to 81 million gallons per day again.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer says it’s crucial for residents to continue to conserve water so that the liquid oxygen that’s used to purify water, can be used to treat COVID patients instead.

“COVID is obviously still with us and continues to impact us in different ways. So we talked about last time that OUC was experiencing an impact on its liquid oxygen supply and that remains the same so it’s critical that we together with our businesses and our residents continue to conserve water.”

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Dyer says quite simply, these efforts will save lives during the latest delta variant surge. 

“We’ve done a pretty good job so far on the conservation side. So the city led the way on some of the things that we have done.”

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The county reached peak new COVID-19 cases about two weeks ago, but patients already in the hospital continue to require specialized treatment and care including supplemental oxygen and ventilators.

Danielle Prieur is WMFE's education reporter.