(22 Jul 2021) A medical official in Louisiana is bracing for what she expects will be thousands more cases of COVID-19 in the coming weeks, including many more young people than have been infected up until now.
Dr. Catherine O'Neal is the chief medical officer at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge.
She's also an infectious disease expert.
"Delta virus is much more infectious. Its viral load is thousands of times higher than our previous variants," said O'Neal in an interview with The Associated Press.
"It's going to make even the average healthy person sick now as opposed to that person may have had great antibodies for last year's virus, or at least some immune system for it, but not this year."
She's blunt about vaccine hesitancy.
"Lots of people are going to do OK with COVID. That's that's not why we get the vaccine. We get the vaccine because the people around us, we're actually contributing to their health and we'll contribute to their death if we're unvaccinated."
Louisiana reported 2,843 new COVID-19 cases Thursday and 5,388 — the third highest since the pandemic began — on Wednesday.
Hospitalizations are up steeply in the past month, from 242 on June 19 to 913 in the latest report.
It's the highest number of hospitalizations since early February, when numbers were descending after a winter surge and as vaccines were becoming available.
Fifteen new deaths were reported Thursday.
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