We're joined now by Dr Catherine O'Neill, chief medical officer at Our Lady of Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana State.

That has been particularly hard hit at this time.

Dr.

O'Neil, thanks so much for joining us tonight.

Thank you for having me.

So Louisiana is now about 2700 cases in.

At least 119 people have died.

What's the latest on the ground in Baton Rouge?

Our hospital is the largest hospital in the state, and we're also trauma hospital.

We used to be very busy, but we've seen an influx since last Thursday.

Of continued, I see you needing covert patients.

Currently, we have 45 positive patients.

A little over half of them are on the ventilator.

Here in New York, we have several major hospitals, and there's still serious concern about a lack of supplies.

Baton Rouge is obviously much smaller with fewer hospitals.

How is your hospital doing right now on supplies, or what resource is?

Do you feel that you're in need of in particular?

And are you concerned about reaching capacity?

Right.

So right now our hospital is not near capacity.

But what?

We are near capacity on our some of those things that we use for people who are on the better later, for long periods of time and especially those who are a proxy mix of certain drugs.

We've had difficulty purchasing.

We do have them.

But our long term need for them is something that we're concerned about.

We have enough peopIe.

We've been using our people, you responsibly knowing that so close to New Orleans that we were going to see a lot of these patients.

But we do worry about the next several weeks as we continue to see that increase in patients and making sure that our staff members have everything they need but that we're using it responsibly.

And New Orleans is on an especially concerning curve right now, at nearly 18 deaths per 100,000 Orleans Parish has the highest death rate in the country, and it's not particularly close to you think that Mardi Gras was a big source of infection there and and where you live as well.

I think that you can't ignore the fact that morning girl happened recently.

I think what you've seen in Seattle in other areas around the country is that we do have community spread and depending on the community, we also have accelerators and and the timing of our increased does coincide with our Morty Graf celebrations, which were held around the state and then our ST Patrick's Day celebrations and those festivities.

This is a big festival time for Louisiana.

And now that Governor John Bel Edwards says has had a stay at home rule, I hope to see a decrease.

But those accelerators preceded our first big influx of cases, and I have to believe that they made a difference in what we're seeing now.

How would you say that people in Louisiana are reacting to social distancing?

Do you think that they're taking it seriously?

And what's your message to people who may not be?

I think you're taking it seriously.

I think that what we're seeing is people coming to the slow realization as it hits each community that that social distancing Israel that it's not about cannot go to dinner with the family and the evenings cannot have Sunday dinner with my family.

As usual, we really are needing to stay in our house is so we've seen that realization come with the impatient increased.

And luckily, it's warm here in Louisiana.

We're having a great spring, and so people are able to social distance outside and not have to congregate in their houses.

But it's it's hard for everybody.

It's hard for our community.

Thank you so much for your time, Dr Neil.

We really appreciate you and what you're doing in the community.

Hi, everyone.

George Stephanopoulos here.

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