“I’ve never seen anything like this”

There were seven deaths attributed to the coronavirus — COVID-19 – in Louisiana on Wednesday. By Friday afternoon the toll in the state was at 13.
Kenneth Cochran, president and CEO of Opelousas General Health System, spoke at Wednesday’s Parish Council meeting in Opelousas.
“I have never seen anything like this,” Cochran said.
“There is some precedent for the country to lockdown like we are and to take these kinds of measures over something you can’t really see,” he said.
The social distancing that was present at the meeting is what made a difference in the 1918 flu epidemic. The flu struck Philadelphia before it citizens could organize. By the time the flu arrived in St. Louis, Missouri, the citizens had started social distancing and experienced a better outcome than Philadelphians were able to achieve.
Cochran has been a health care professional for more 30 years and has served at the Opelousas hospital about five years.
COVID-19 is a weak virus, he said. “Which is why you can carry it and never know.”
The asymptomatic carriers allow the virus to transmit itself quickly by droplet transfer.
“We are all sitting here now. Some of us could be carriers and not know it and some of us might get sick from it and others might not get sick from it in which case it difficult to constrain,” he said.
“I’m in full support of what we are doing in the nation, as a state, as an area. The idea is to get everyone away from each other,” he said.
As of Wednesday, the hospital had screened about 30 patients for the virus and six results — all negative — had been returned.
By the next morning the first positive test for the virus was reported in St. Landry Parish. By Thursday afternoon, a second positive was reported.
The time to obtain test results ranges from four to 10 days. Cochran expects there will be a backlog of tests.
The first patient at the hospital was swabbed for the virus on March 11.
Cochran, who has served as a nurse in the military, said medicine is entering a “wartime” status.
Medical providers in Louisiana on Wednesday received a mandate to pause procedures and diagnostic studies, he said.
Persons who think they have the virus should call their medical provider before showing up in person, he said.
The public should expect to be screened before getting a test and those tests are being rationed, he said.
Rationing in health care is something the public is likely to hear more about in the days to come.
There is a shortage of personal protection equipment such as masks and Cochran believes when the equipment runs out there will be no restocking.
There are medications that are being rationed now, he said.
The supply situation is going to result in the rules for medical care being changed, he said.