This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – Personal protective gear is running low again around the country amid growing cases of COVID-19.

“The second wave that we’re seeing here in Baton Rouge and the first wave that a lot of places similar to Texas and Florida, have created a dramatic need for PPE,” Dr. Christopher Thomas said from Our Lady of the Lake said.

In the beginning of the pandemic health professionals were faced with the same issues. At OLOL health officials say they were proactive.

“Once we saw a reduction in the amount of patients we had in what we called phase 1, we immediately said the virus itself is probably not going away, and in order for us to understand how to handle a potential second wave we have certain supply items that we need and we in advance prepared to buy them in significant supply so that if a second wave came we had them,” Dr. Thomas said.

Thomas says if a shortage were to hit the capitol city it would be catastrophic.

“Personal protective equipment is absolutely essential for team members to feel safe and to take excellent care,” he said.

Over at Baton Rouge General, officials say they’re continuing to keep an eye on their supplies.

Dr. Thomas says the best thing for everyone to do is to be safe and take precautions.

“People need to wear a mask, they need to socially distance and they need to wash their hands because the more they don’t do that something like ppe shortages will come again,” Dr. Thomas said.

Thomas says our lady of the lake says currently they have enough PPE to last them months.