A look back on the year of COVID – and a look forward

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Friday, March 12, 2021

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A look back on the year of COVID – and a look forward

Mike Scott, mscott@stph.org

St. Tammany Health System team members pause on Friday (March 12, 2021) for a solemn ceremony to commemorate one year of COVID-19 in the community and to memorialize those lives lost during the pandemic. STHS’s first COVID-positive case was confirmed on March 13, 2020.  (Photo by Mike Scott / STHS)

One needn’t look far to find heartbreaking statistics illustrating just how difficult the past year of COVID has been.

By March 13, the one-year mark since the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed at St. Tammany Health System, the number of Louisianians infected with the coronavirus will have reached nearly 440,000. Of those, nearly 10,000 have died.

More difficult to measure, but still tragic, is the emotional impact those deaths have had on the families left behind. The same goes for the army of healthcare workers who have worked regularly to the point of exhaustion, often pushing through unfathomable grief, to honor their commitment to protecting the public.  

Still, the year of COVID-19 can’t accurately be described without also touching on the litany of small victories – and some not-so-small ones – that have played out in the past 12 months.  

Of course, the biggest and most consequential was the historically rapid development of multiple COVID vaccines.

But according to St. Tammany Health System infectious disease expert Dr. Mike Hill, there are many, many others.

“We’ve had a lot of victories,” Dr. Hill said. “And we had no playbook, no rule book, no nothing. We had to create that out of ether. There was nothing out there. But we got ahead of it. We developed some rules and guidance – with some help with the CDC and others – but we really got together and learned how to keep the healthcare system safe, not only for our patients but for employees.”

That last point is no small thing. Reflecting on the health system’s journey over the past year, Dr. Hill expressed particular pride in the way St. Tammany’s frontline healthcare workers responded to the crisis with fearlessness, dedication and determination.

“If I had to sum up the past year in one word, I would say ‘courage,’” he said. “It took a lot of courage for people to come to work, to take care of patients, not knowing if they were going to catch COVID. There was also the exhaustion of wearing all that PPE and having to stay in rooms with COVID-positive patients, as well as the emotional toll of losing a patient you might have gotten very close with.”

A similar courage was displayed by COVID patients, particularly those earlier ones, who didn’t know what the next day might bring – or if they’d even be able to survive the disease, he added.

Then there were members of the community, from which so much was asked in the interest of stopping the spread of infection. Many lost their livelihoods. Others lost much more.

If I had to sum up the past year in one word, I would say ‘courage.'"

St Tammany Health System infection disease specialist Dr. Mike Hill

“I think it’s been a tough year, but it’s been one of overwhelming courageousness,” Dr. Hill said.

But if “courage” is the word that springs to mind in reflecting on the past year, when he looks forward to what the future might hold, Dr. Hill has two additional words.

The first is “hope,” thanks to the promise of the nation’s ongoing and accelerating vaccination effort.

The other is “patience.”

“We think that by the end of May, people who want vaccines should be able to get them and will have gotten them,” he said. “At that time we can sit down and say, ‘Do we need masks or not?,’ and look at how to go forward and get back to normal.”

That being said, he warned that we’re not at the finish line yet – which means mask-wearing, social distancing and hand washing are still the rules of the day.

People should also get used to the idea of getting COVID booster shots every so often as virus variants crop up, perhaps every year or two.

“We’re so close now,” he said. “Just be patient. Let’s get everybody vaccinated. Between the people who have had COVID and who now have some natural immunity, and the people who are vaccinated, we should get to some herd immunity at some point.

“The great thing, and it feels so good to finally be able to say this, is that if we all keep doing our part, if we keep being patient and we keep playing by the rules, that return to normalcy will probably come sooner rather than later.”

Learn more about COVID-19 in St. Tammany Parish at StTammany.health/COVID-19.

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