As hospitals across the state reach capacity with COVID-19 patients, some healthcare facilities have enough beds, but they are having staffing issues to provide adequate care for patients. Governor John Bel Edwards asked FEMA for approximately 700 healthcare workers.
“It’s also happening in multiple parts of the country all at one time, and so it’s hard to draw on staffing from other parts of the country because they are unwilling to give up their staff,” says Edwards.
Louisiana received zero hits from FEMA in its staffing request.
As daily case counts continue to set records across the state with community spread, Our Lady of the Lourdes CMO Doctor Henry Kaufman in Lafayette says they are seeing their staff contract COVID as a result.
“We’re seeing our nurses get infected from community spread, our nurses, our CNAs, our care providers, and some of our physicians,” says Kaufman
Kaufman says the public needs to understand when a healthcare worker contracts COVID it creates a large absence in the workplace.
“When a nurse becomes infected the quickest, she or he can return to work is about 10 days, and on average it’s a little bit longer than that,” says Kaufman.
Reported by Brooke Thorington
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