In addition to state offices returning to indoor masking requirements, Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge is requiring all to wear face masks. Infectious disease specialist at the Lake Dr. Catherine O’Neal says the rapid increase in cases forced them to return to face masks.
“Over the weekend we saw cases just increase exponentially and we knew that at this point it was a block and tackle, we had to put these in right away or we were going to start seeing healthcare workers who were getting infected and having to go home for ten days,” said O’Neal
While there are reports that symptoms from the Omicron variant aren’t as bad as Delta and not as many are being hospitalized, however, O’Neal says it’s still too early to know the impacts of the newest variant.
“It sounds eerily familiar, we said the same thing when it started in Wuhan, said the same thing in June with the Delta variant, while this is infecting lots of young people it doesn’t seem nearly as bad until everybody has it,” said O’Neal
Another reason O’Neal says we need to mask up again, get vaccinated, and/or boosted is that if you do catch the Omicron variant and need to be treated at the hospital there’s a shortage of monoclonal antibody fusion treatments for the new variant.
“Because the monoclonal antibody infusions that we have work for Delta, they don’t work for Omicron, and we won’t get them because they are in very short supply,” said O’Neal.
O’Neal highly recommends you get tested for Omicron before you visit with people outside of your immediate home and/or travel.
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