Lafayette General Medical Center

As covid-19 cases continue to rise throughout acadiana, ochner lafayette genera's medical center has 95 covid inpatients as of yesterday afternoon and nine of those patients are on ventilators ..

News 1's patsy douglas is a ochner lafayette genera's medical center now..

Patsy how is it looking for healthcare workers right now..

Healthcare workers here are seeing full icu rooms and alot of emergency room traffic as covid-19 cases continue to rise and they were already considering a third wave to start at the beginning of november, just right before the holidays ..

3 sot - "we are worried about what was going to happened over christmas and new years .."vo - lafayette general is seeing 95 covid-19 inpatients..

Amanda logue, chief medical officer says giving the vaccine to inpatients is a challenge when their recovering from other illnesses sot - "not the best time to give one of the vaccines , there are side effects associated with them , it is likely going to exacerbate those side effects , when you give it to somebody who is recovering from something else , and we also have a trick with getting them back in three weeks as well .."vo - logue says they have already sent our 7500 invitations for people to get vaccinated to their patients that are 70 and older ..

Sot - "so we are starting with that group first because i's the easiest to get a mass amount of information out to directly and then walking into going further and further back in time and opening it up to 70 plus population to get it at any time...we are not there yet but we are getting it as fast as we can .."vo - logue says they will start vaccines at the hymen center in hopes to slow down disruption in the hospital..

Sot - "we will start to move all of our employees, and all of our patients that want it to the same location .

Which will make us of course more efficient and we think that we will be able to scale up , how many people we can see.".

Right now the initial vaccine rollout is limited... to patients aged 70 and older , but healthcare workers at ochsner anticipate expanding vaccine availability across the community as soon as possible.

Live in lafayette patsy douglas news 15 thanks patsy!

Amanda