Louisiana’s 'new’ normal should include most of the same old COVID rules, STHS chief medical officer says

‘I think we can feel pretty comfortable that our eight weeks of social distancing and paying attention to good hand hygiene and all the interventions that we’ve done here at the health system and as part of the community are seeming to work,’ said Dr. Patrick Torcson, chief medical officer at St. Tammany Health System. ‘(But) we’re not completely out of the woods. There’s certainly a ways to go before there’s zero transmission in the community.’ (Photo by Tim San Fillippo / STHS)

By Mike Scott, mscott@stph.org

With Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and St. Tammany Parish President Mike Cooper revealing their plans this week for the first stage of a phased public re-entry amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, locals are about to begin to dip their toe into the waters of the new normal after eight long weeks of seclusion.

But as eager as people might be to get out and about, they need to be smart about how they do it to avoid a resurgence in local COVID cases, according to Dr. Patrick Torcson, the chief medical officer at St. Tammany Health System in Covington.

Up until now, social distancing has been the rule of the day to help “flatten the curve” of new infections. Now, it’s all about social responsibility, he said.

“It’s probably a little premature (to let our guard down entirely) right now,” he said. “The data is showing that we’re still seeing some new cases in the community. It’s not time to take our foot off the gas. We have a ways to go.”

And so, while restaurants, hair salons, gyms, churches, movie theaters and other “nonessential” businesses will begin opening Friday at 25 percent of their pre-COVID capacity, people should still practice all the prevention measures that have been key to keeping infection rates manageable, Torcson said.

That means social distancing should still be practiced, along with good hand-hygiene, and coughing and sneezing etiquette. Additionally, people should continue to wear a mask or other face covering when in public and avoid touching surfaces on which the virus might be lying in wait.  

“I think we can’t say enough that we do need to pay attention to all those different infection prevention methods that have brought us this far, to where were seeing a diminishment of new cases,” Torcson said. “We can’t give up on those yet, despite how disruptive this whole thing has been and the strong desire on the part of everybody to get back to normal.”

That makes the next couple of weeks a crucial point in the region’s COVID-19 fight. Any major reversal in infection rates could spell another extended period of restrictions.

On the other hand, as long as people remain vigilant and exercise social responsibility, they can feel reasonably safe moving about the community.

That includes at St. Tammany Health System facilities, from its main hospital campus in Covington to the myriad satellite facilities it operates, all of which have been open to non-COVID and non-emergency patients since late April.

“I think everybody should be very reassured that all the lessons we have learned and all the good results that we’ve had here at St. Tammany (Health System) have made us an even more high-performing organization, when we were very high-performing even before this pandemic,” he said. “I think we actually have more protocols and knowledge and processes in place to make us an even safer organization than we were before, so there’s really no need to be concerned about the infection prevention aspect of COVID-19 and coming back to a healthcare facility.”