Louisiana an epicenter for U.S. virus surge

(11 Aug 2021) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4339164

Instead of seeing her usual patients, neurologist Robin Davis is spending her days helping nurses care for the ever-increasing number of coronavirus patients at Ochsner Medical Center in the New Orleans suburb of Jefferson, Louisiana.
She's preparing medication and transporting patients in wheelchairs.
With elective procedures and nonurgent care on hold as a fourth wave of the virus surges across Louisiana and the southeast region, Davis says there's no greater need for her services than in the thinly stretched nursing department.
"I was giving bed baths on Sunday, emptying trash cans, changing sheets, rolling patients to MRI," said Davis, a doctor who specializes in the treatment of epilepsy. "If it took pressure off a nurse, if it gave her time to do what she needed to do, that's what we did."
State officials say the peak of Louisiana's fourth and latest virus surge could be weeks away, but hospitals like Ochsner are already overrun with COVID-19 patients and increasingly having to turn away people with other life-threatening emergencies such as heart attacks or strokes.
Louisiana continues to be one of the national epicenters for the virus, hitting a record number of coronavirus hospitalizations last week and growing each day since with roughly 2,900 hospitalizations.
More than 1,000 of those patients are currently at Ochsner's 40 medical facilities across the state, and roughly 400 of those are in Ochsner's New Orleans area hospitals.
Assisting full-time staff are contract health care workers from outside the system and doctors from specialty care areas.
COVID intensive care unit nurses Joan Blizzard and Arthur Bienvenu say they're working just as hard to take care of each another and their peers as their patients at Ochsner Medical Center in the New Orleans suburb of Jefferson, Louisiana.
Tying each other's gowns, prepping medicine and machines with a largely unspoken language as they shuffle in and out of patient rooms, their eyes the only part of their faces visible through protective gear.
The magnitude of this current surge is profound, Blizzard said.
"People are getting sick so quickly this time," Blizzard said. "They will be talking to you, and within hours, we're having multiple people at the bedside doing emergent procedures. It is so scary."
Many hospitalized patients are wishing they had gotten vaccinated.
In a recovery room a few floors up, 26-year-old Jerome Batiste of New Orleans, said he so rarely got sick he didn't think he needed the vaccine.
A few rooms away, Mary Lubrano, a critical care nurse for 30 years, has been hospitalized with the coronavirus for two weeks and counting, suffering with low oxygen and labored breathing.
"You don't want to end up this way," she said. "This is the scaredest I've ever been in my whole life. Everyone needs to be vaccinated or we'll never beat this any other way."

Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter:   / ap_archive  
Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​
Instagram:   / apnews  


You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...