Data Analysis: COVID-19 Is Filling Up Hospitals In Small Cities
Larry Pichon called an ambulance to take his wife, Judy, to a hospital in Lake Charles, in southwest Louisiana, on the morning of July 13. He'd had to do this before.
She had a rare autoimmune disease — granulomatosis with polyangiitis, which causes inflammation of blood vessels and can be particularly damaging for the lungs and kidneys. It wasn't uncommon for Judy to make a trip to the emergency room.
"When she got in the ambulance to go was the last time I saw her, and that was around nine o'clock," Larry remembered.
Larry would normally have accompanied his wife and waited at the hospital, but rules enacted amid the surge of coronavirus cases meant he couldn't stay. Judy called around 5 p.m. to say she was feeling better. She told him not to come to the hospital. At 8 p.m., her condition changed. Judy was put on a ventilator.
"Normally you go on a ventilator, you go in the ICU — there were no beds in the ICU due to the coronavirus," he said.
Hospital staff said he
