LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — If you saw UAMS employees smiling a little more this week, there's a good reason. For Dr. Michelle Krause, it's hard to contain the excitement.
"It's wonderful, wonderful news. I mean, I haven't seen such low levels in the well over two years that we started having patients hospitalized with COVID-19." Dr. Krause, co-leader for UAMS's COVID response, said.
Her excitement is understandable as COVID's been a fight each and every day for those working in health care. Wednesday was a welcome sight they haven't seen in awhile, though.
"I was so excited when we got to single digits and then for that one period of time we got down to, yesterday, where we had no patients that required respiratory isolation," Dr. Krause said.
This is huge news for both the state and those who work each and every day to make patients better.
There's been a huge amount of progress compared to a couple months ago where it didn't look like this would happen.
"So we were very hopeful at the time that as fast as we went up, you still have to come back down. So we were very fortunate that that coming down period wasn't very prolonged," Dr. Krause said.
She isn't alone in thinking this either as her colleague Gina Boshears, Clinical Service Manager at UAMS, is feeling the same way.
This is a short lived feat as some patients were admitted overnight, but despite that she's still celebrating.
"It's a great feeling. The morale is so much better, there's a lot less stress," Boshears said.
While this is good news, they're not getting ahead of themselves. After all, this time last year and we were also seeing a decrease in cases.
Fast forward a couple months after that and hospitals were swarmed again.
"We all were so excited and we were sure it was over the last time," Boshears said. "So I think we've learned to not get our hopes up and just to expect anything around the corner."
This time around is hopefully different as more people are fully vaccinated. This time around, they've also got more experience doing this.
So while this may have been a temporary victory, the attitude is still the same--they're celebrating, but not letting their guard down.
"I'm proud of our staff and their resilience and they're willingness to do whatever it takes to get us through this," Boshears said. "We're ready to do this again if we have to."