Louisiana Critical Care Doctor to Gov. Bill Lee: Statewide Stay-at-Home Order ‘Needs to Happen Now’

NASHVILLE -- (Friday, March 27, 2020) -- Dr. Aaron Milstone, of Franklin, Tenn., a pulmonary physician, hosted a livestream webinar with Dr. Christopher Bryan Thomas, a critical care doctor battling the COVID-19 pandemic in Louisiana. Dr. Thomas shared what Tennessee can expect if Governor Lee continues to ignore medical experts and their plea for a Stay at Home order.

"Governor Lee's failure to issue a stay at home order is allowing the pandemic to spread through communities nearly unchecked. There will be more cases of COVID in Tennessee today. And the death toll will only grow from here." said Dr. Milstone.

Dr. Thomas. a critical care doctor battling the COVID-19 pandemic in Louisiana is telling Gov. Bill Lee to take every available precaution to slow down the spread of coronavirus.

“This is a point where direction and clear leadership is necessary,” according to Dr. Christopher Thomas, a medical director of pulmonary medicine in Baton Rouge, La. and native of Tennessee.

There is currently “no other option” than for Gov. Lee to issue a stay-at-home order, says Thomas, whose parents still live in Tennessee.
“There is an intervention: it’s stay at home and it needs to happen now,” Thomas said.

“We need to physically distance and it requires leadership to physically distance,” Thomas said. “We have a volume issue… if patients are allowed to interact with each other still, go out to the store and don’t stay home, we can’t handle that volume.”

According to Thomas, the reported numbers of COVID-19 patients are “not the actual reality” due to a lag in testing and he worries that patient volume will continue to rise if people are not in their homes.

With more than 2,300 confirmed cases in Louisiana already, state hospitals are bracing for a long, hard battle against the pandemic without enough resources. To avoid a similar fate, the time for bold action in Tennessee is now, according to Dr. Thomas.