BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD)- March 9 marks one year since the first case of the coronavirus was diagnosed in Louisiana.
For the past year, healthcare hero’s at Baton Rouge General have been working on the frontlines saving lives.
Dr. Louis Minsky, Baton Rouge General Chief of Staff, described the start of the pandemic as ‘dark’ and ‘gloomy.’
“March and April of 2020 were really dark days,” he said.
The hospital admitted their first COVID-19 patient on March 17, 2020.
Since then 2,600 people have left the hospital having recovered from COVID-19.
In late April of 2020, BRG had 169 COVID-19 patients.
On March 9, 2021, the hospital has 35 COVID-19 patients in the hospital.
“I am optimistic,” Minsky said. ““We believe the vaccine helped to decrease the number of infections. Our rates are finally going down very rapidly.”
Minsky says the hospital has learned new strategies to operate during a pandemic. He won’t forget the struggle for personal protective equipment, reaching max capacity and watching his healthcare workers get sick.
“We learned that mask and social distancing work very very well,” he said, “It was a very effective means, not only decreasing COVID-19, but also we saw almost no influenza this year.”
At the start of the pandemic BRG had 50 to 60 healthcare workers out sick during a week. Now, sick healthcare workers are in single digits.
65 percent of the hospitals staff is vaccinated for the virus.
Minsky wants to remind people the pandemic is not over.
“There is still some concern because we can not vaccinate people fast enough,” Minsky said.
Minsky encourages the public to continue following COVID-19 mitigations.
More information on vaccine eligibility in Louisiana is available here.