There’s some positive news from Ochsner Health, during their Wednesday conference call they indicated a small decline in COVID hospitalizations. CEO Warner Thomas said this week they have 1,028 COVID patients across their hospital systems.
“That’s a slight decrease down from last week we were at 1,043 so I wouldn’t consider that a victory, but we are seeing some plateauing, especially in New Orleans,” said Thomas.
Thomas said 89-percent of their current hospital patients are unvaccinated.
Even with a slight decline in hospital patients, Thomas said nonemergency surgeries are still having to be postponed but they aren’t all elective, they are procedures impacting those with cancer and heart disease, and those needing organ transplants.
“This is absolutely impacting other services, last week we canceled 1,160 surgeries and procedures across our system,” said Thomas.
Thomas said they have had to redeploy approximately 800 staff throughout the system to handle the influx of COVID patients which is another reason for canceling procedures.
As the fourth surge continues, Thomas said they have seen the number of children with COVID at Ochsner more than double in the last month which is an alarming trend.
“In July we had seven pediatric patients admitted, we have 16 currently hospitalized across our system, and that’s a significant increase from where we’ve been previously, so definitely concerned about what we’re seeing there,” said Thomas.
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