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February 26, 2020
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Louisiana still has no cases of Covid-19. Several dozen are currently being monitored, but none are from the hot zone of the pandemic.
The Louisiana Office of Public Health, along with the rest of the U.S. has shifted its strategy towards Covid-19, according to Dr. Frank Welch, Medical Director for the Bureau for Community Preparedness for the Office of Public Health, Wednesday, February 26. Because of Covid-19’s similarities to influenza, said Welch, Louisiana has measures already in place.
It used to be that only those returning from Hubei Province would be monitored by officials. This was because Wuhan City, the epicenter of the illness, is located within Hubei. Now, the Office of Public Health has expanded its monitoring process.
“We have had people under monitoring for the past couple of weeks because they have returned from China, none have returned from Hubei Province,” Welch said.
Once people return from China, the office checks in with those people for 14 days to ensure no symptoms occur. More than 60,000 have returned to the U.S. so far, said Welch, and only 14-15 have turned up positive so far. According to Welch, all have done well.
Having locally spread within multiple countries, Covid-19 fits the description of a pandemic.
“Now I’m not sure if the World Health Organization has officially declared it as a pandemic, but they’re going to,” said Welch. “There are cases in every single continent except Antarctica.”
The mortality statistics are currently high, some listing 2%, but these statistics are likely inflated because the data gathered when a virus first takes hold misses those unaffected or mildly affected.
“You can imagine when something first starts, people who are far sicker will come to your attention,” Welch explained. He said, it is thought that people can contract the virus and present no symptoms at all, and “those people wouldn’t come to the attention of the healthcare system, it would be those people who got really, really, sick. And obviously if people die from it, we’re going to know they died from Covid-19.”
Covid-19 causes a bad cold, coughing, sneezing, or any other typical symptoms of a cold, common to many respiratory viruses, and like those viruses it transmits through respiratory fluids.
Because of its ease of transmission and the game of “catch up,” that researchers are having to do to learn about the virus, the strategy has shifted.
“We’ve kinda moved from that strategy of ‘I hope it doesn’t come here,’ to ‘when it comes here we need to be prepared,’” said Welch.
Louisiana has a head start in this scenario. Covid-19 is a severe respiratory illness, like the flu, and the State of Louisiana has been preparing for a pandemic flu for about 20 years – both public and private.
“Virtually 99%, if not more, of those plans would directly apply to Covid-19. So we’re currently using those plans as our basis for planning for possible community spread within the United States,” Welch explained.
