“Caution”: Louisiana doctors are facing another COVID-19 surge

New Orleans August 5 (Reuters)-Louisiana doctors have experienced it before: fatigue, sadness, and an overflowing intensive care unit. However, this new surge in COVID-19 cases caused by the delta variant differs because it did not have to be.

Rebekah Gee, Louisiana State Health Minister until last year and now Head of Health Services at Louisiana State University, said: “It is very frustrating and unfair for doctors to see preventable distress.”

The national vaccination campaign launched last year provided new weapons against the new coronavirus, in addition to masks and social distance. Health experts say that shots can prevent illness or prevent people from getting serious illness, and the more people who are vaccinated, the worse they mutate as the virus spreads. Says it’s less likely.

However, the Luizians have been more hesitant to get a jab. According to a Reuters analysis of state and county data, state immunization rates ranked 47th among the states in the United States on a given first dose, which had a significant impact on the public health system. On Thursday, Louisiana reached a record number of COVID-19 hospitalizations, arriving at 2,350.

“See Louisiana as a reminder of what happens when vaccination rates are low in a state,” Gee said. “And what happens is that the virus continues to mutate, find available hosts, spread like wildfires, and the only way to stop it is with vaccines.”

According to doctors, low vaccination rates have been witnessed by past poor health rankings, false information campaigns by influential people, including the State Attorney General, and other highly conservative states. It is due to the division of the same ideology regarding the vaccines that are being used.

Gee is still worried while the seriousness of the situation is flooding the Louisiana vaccination center.

“What I’m worried about is what happens in the next and subsequent variants,” Gee said. “The virus can be more deadly.”

“The only way to avoid this is herd immunity, which is 75% of vaccinated people,” said Gee.

However, according to the latest data, only 43% of Luizianas were initially vaccinated and only 37.1% were fully vaccinated. The figures for the entire United States were 57.9% and 49.7%, respectively. (Figures on US cases and vaccinations) https://tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR

“Everyone has reached capacity”

One of the alarming aspects of the latest Delta Variant Surge is its impact on children and teens, who were considered low risk in the early stages of the pandemic.

COVID-19 patients filled all beds in the ICU of a New Orleans Children’s Hospital this week. Doctors and public health leaders said they are increasingly seeing patients with serious illnesses who are younger and do not have the underlying health conditions to make them more sensitive. Two-thirds of hospitalized children are too young to qualify for the vaccine.

Overall, Oxner Health, Louisiana’s largest non-profit healthcare provider, positive rates for people under the age of 19 reached nearly 24% this week. This is up from 3.5% in late June.

Dr. Catherine Baumgarten, director of infection control and prevention at Oxner, said Louisiana is only seeing the beginning of a variant of the Delta.

“We expect to need more ICU beds in the coming weeks,” she said.

Some Louisiana doctors sound like soldiers still fighting the wars that people far from the front line are suffering from. They say they no longer feel that the public has generously supported them and are facing a situation that worsens without the support they saw in the early days of the pandemic.

Thomas Kryevsky, a physician in the emergency room working at several hospitals in the New Orleans metropolitan area, said:

Krajewski’s wife, Genevieve, is also an ER doctor. In peacetime Krajewskis says he may see 50 patients on the shift. There were up to 90 patients this week.

“Everyone has reached capacity. Things are just hanging there,” Krajewski said. “When something scary comes into the door, it feels like it can all fall apart. We live on such an edge. You come in and everything collapses. I’m just waiting for you. “

Report by Bradbrooks; edited by Donna Bryson and Aurora Ellis

Our criteria: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.