Doctor: COVID is real, vaccine will help

As the COVID-19 pandemic began its first surge through Lincoln Parish last spring, Northern Louisiana Medical Center turned its third floor into a 23-bed coronavirus unit.

Then, as mitigation measures were put in place statewide and the confirmed cases of the respiratory illness began to level off, the unit was closed, and a specially designated 15-bed COVID intensive care unit was set up.

As of Monday, the COVID ICU was full. That compares to only three hospitalized COVID patients in early December.

COVID-19 is now on its third swell through Louisiana, and Lincoln Parish is no exception.

“As far as the number, I think it’s worse now than it was in March and April,” Dr. Charles Mason, an NLMC hospitalist, said Monday.

Monday’s report from the Louisiana Department of Hospitals shows 2,591 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Lincoln Parish since the count began in March.

That’s an increase of 110 confirmed cases in a week’s time.

The parish also posted two more deaths Monday attributed to the virus — the toll is now 66 — and two other probable COVID-19 deaths.

“This is real. It’s out there. I’ve been practicing medicine since 1984, and I have never seen anything like this. It is just tragic,” Mason said both to the Ruston Leader and in a separate interview Monday with Ruston Mayor Ronny Walker for Walker’s weekly Facebook video update.

Mason and Walker talked mostly about the recently approved COVID-19 vaccines. Mason was among the first NLMC employees to receive their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine last week.

“It was very similar to getting the flu shot,” Mason said.

But from an emotional standpoint, “it was relief,” he said.

Mason will take his second injection of the two-dose vaccine in January.

The vaccine started being administered last week to hospital workers; this week it’s scheduled to be available to people who work in doctors’ offices, home health workers and emergency medical technicians. Next will be nursing home residents.

Mason predicted the vaccines will be available by this spring to anyone who wants it.

“If everyone gets vaccinated, this will get better,” Mason said about the virus spread.

He said the vaccine is safe, effective and relatively easy to produce. Initial research on messenger RNA vaccines — that’s what the COVID-19 vaccines are — began 12 years ago.

Yet the actual production time for the current vaccines is still unprecedented, Mason said.

Unlike most vaccines, which are a modified virus or viral protein to elicit an immune response, the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines use messenger RNA to instruct the body to begin defending itself against COVID-19.

Both Mason and Walker urged local residents to continue to wear facemasks, social distance, frequently wash their hands and forego traditional holiday gatherings.

“We can all help slow this virus down,” Walker said.