TAMPA — Gov. Ron DeSantis was at Tampa General Hospital on Thursday talking about the benefits of monoclonal antibody treatment.

The governor wants people who catch the virus to consider getting the treatment early.

Tampa General said it has treated 1,600 patients so far with the cocktail of antibodies. It's a treatment that can benefit vaccinated people with breakthrough infections – but timing is key.

"I think the message is just simply that if this is going to work, you really got to do it early,” DeSantis said. “If you test positive and kind of just wait and hope that it doesn't get worse and then it starts to get very severe, by that time doing an monoclonal antibody treatment is probably not going to be something that turns the tide."

The governor wants that message to get out as Florida sees a record breaking number of COVID cases this week.

Dr. Charlie Lockwood says he'd rather see people rely on vaccines before seeking monoclonal antibody treatment.

"We can take care of you if you're sick but we'd rather you not come here, and the way to avoid coming here is to get vaccinated."

TGH’s president said as of Thursday morning the hospital had 136 COVID patients. Of those patients, 54 are in the ICU, and 13 are on ventilators.

The average stay for a patient in the ICU is 14 days. Meanwhile, 15 percent of the cases are breakthrough infections amongst immuno-compromised patients.

The governor pointed out that vaccinated patients can also benefit from monoclonal antibody treatment. ​

"If you've been vaccinated and get infected they will still do it, and this has been proven to be effective against all the various variants that you hear about,” he said.

Even though it has a lot of COVID patients, TGH wants to stress that the hospital is open for business.​  Residents should not delay going there for any medical emergencies.