BATON ROUGE - Two weeks after Our Lady of the Lake announced it was suspending non-emergency surgeries to ensure it had space for a new wave of coronavirus patients, the hospital says its intensive care unit is still at its maximum capacity.

A spokesperson for the hospital says Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center is closely monitoring our bed availability and other factors and will evaluate the possibility of scheduling new non-emergency procedures daily. The health system had announced July 23 it was putting a pause on those surgeries for at least 14 days.

As of Thursday morning, OLOL says it is treating 110 coronavirus patients, with more than 45 percent of them in the ICU.

You can ready the full statement below.

“Like many hospitals across the state, Our Lady of the Lake continues to experience high volumes of COVID and non-COVID patients. Our intensive care unit (ICU) remains at capacity. As of this morning, we have 110 COVID positive patients with 45 percent of those in the ICU.

Two weeks ago we paused scheduling new, non-urgent surgical procedures requiring an in-patient bed as COVID cases continued to climb. We did this to make additional beds and staff available. Previously scheduled procedures continued as scheduled. Currently, we are closely monitoring our bed availability, staffing and operating room schedules in order to provide the community and our patients the care they need. We continue to schedule outpatient and new urgent surgical procedures, and evaluate scheduling new non-urgent surgical procedures requiring an in-patient bed on a day-by-day basis.

Outpatient procedures continue uninterrupted and we encourage patients to maintain those procedures and not delay care. We have seen the negative health impacts that delaying needed care caused earlier this year. In addition, if you need emergency care, go to the emergency room. We are able to provide you with the emergency care you need, especially in a life-threatening and time-sensitive situation.

We encourage patients to contact their physician if they have any questions or to schedule appointments online or in-person to discuss care options.

Our physicians, nurses, clinical teams and all staff have heroically responded to the pandemic to provide exceptional care to all those who need it. But we also need your help. Everyone in the community is needed to help our healthcare workers and stop the spread of COVID-19. Wear masks when not at home, maintain social distancing, practice good hand hygiene, stay home as much as possible and decrease social activity by at least 50 percent. Stopping the spread of this virus take everyone in the community doing these easy precautions that science shows us truly work.” – Stephanie Manson, Chief Operating Officer at Our Lady of the Lake