Coroner feels some may feel pressured not to report COVID-19

The rate of new COVID-19 cases in St. Mary Parish has slowed, and while that is a good thing, one of the reasons behind it could be a bit misleading.
St. Mary Parish Coroner Dr. Eric Melancon said Friday that in addition to a lot of people having the disease already, others may contract the virus but are not reporting it because of pressure from family or employers.
“There’s a lot of pushback so that we don’t increase our numbers, which there’s no right or wrong answer there,” he said Friday. “It does hurt the parish in a way when we don’t have an accurate reply of what our true numbers are because later if we ever experience another global pandemic, our resources may be limited compared to what they would have been if we had the accurate numbers.”
According to the state Office of Public Heath’s figures as of noon Sunday, St. Mary Parish had 1,889 confirmed cases and 77 confirmed deaths. St. Mary has the number of deaths at 78, with two possible pending for up to 80, Melancon said.
The case increase is up from 1,600 a month ago.
While infection rate has slowed, Melancon said there is no way to stop it at the moment.
“Typically, what we’re finding is the only way we can stop it is to either get the disease or have a vaccine, and we know we don’t have a vaccine as of yet,” Melancon said.
While Melancon said any death is too many and the death toll for St. Mary is a “huge number,” he said that the death toll is low in the parish compared to what people could experience due to the illness. Medical practitioners are doing a better job of treating patients, he said.
That treatment among physicians in St. Mary Parish is not uniform, though, Melancon said, as each medical practitioner treats the virus how they see fit.
The majority of deaths in St. Mary Parish were among those older than 50, with the oldest being 101 and the youngest 31.
“People are so focused on the exact numbers,” Melancon said. “It really doesn’t matter. We have had almost 1,900 cases and say 80 deaths, so they’ll say ‘oh, but that’s such a low number.’ Well, I don’t want to be one of those 80 people who died.”
While Melancon said the virus is similar to the flu in many ways, COVID-19 can have such an effect on some people that it can kill them.
In St. Mary Parish, Melancon said one flu-related death was recorded last season.
While there is a perception that COVID-19 only can affect the elderly and those with medical illnesses, Melancon said that is false.
“If you look at the Department of Health website and data, 24% of the people who have died in our region did not have any comorbid conditions,” he said Friday. “Now, is that because it wasn’t reported on their death certificates by the physicians that were signing it out that they had these other comorbidities or is it that they’re just otherwise healthy people?”
However, he noted that younger people typically handle COVID, like other illnesses, better.
Despite the state recently entering Phase Three, Melancon said people should continue to do what they have to in order to safeguard themselves.
“When you walk in a mine field, you certainly want to walk lightly,” he said. “Again, the virus isn’t gone. It’s still there. Most people are not going to have much of an issue if they catch the virus. Some people will die. That’s as simple as you can make it.”
As for a vaccine, Melancon said that even if one comes out in the next month or two, it likely will not be available widespread to the public until next spring or early next summer.
He said the pecking order for vaccine distribution will be first-line responders first, then nursing home patients, while general population is far down the list.
Melancon, who has practiced medicine for 27 years, said that COVID-19 has been the biggest learning curve for him.
“I think that’s the hardest part,” he said. “The last time we had a pandemic was 100 years ago, so probably the biggest dilemma is that I think the medical field was too quick to latch onto ideologies or treatments that ‘may have shown benefit’ and use that as gospel. Medicine is never like that.”
There is still learning to be done, too.
“I don’t think we’ve learned nearly what we will know,” he said. “Probably this time next year, we’ll have a pretty good grasp of all the nuances of what transpired with COVID-19, and I think we’ll have a better playbook to go by the next time something like this happens.
“Now, the responses we use may not be applicable to the next disease,” Melancon added. “We don’t know, but I’d like to say I’m sure we’ll have a better collaboration or at least an understanding where the physicians who are managing patients and corporate medicine and politics and all of this, we don’t get into all these contests of who’s right and who’s wrong. Actually, everybody’s been wrong. We’ve all been wrong, and we’re learning.”