BATON ROUGE - The Our Lady of the Lake health system says it is putting non-emergency surgeries on hold at its Baton Rouge location in order to ensure bed space is available as a surge in coronavirus cases causes an upswing in hospitalizations.

A spokesperson confirmed the decision Wednesday evening, saying Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center was making beds and staff available to handle the "rapid increase" in COVID-19 patients The hospital plans to put those surgeries on hold for two weeks.

Urgent surgeries will continue uninterrupted at the Baton Rouge campus, and OLOL Children's Hospital and OLOL Ascension will continue operating normally.

You can read the full statement below.

“To make additional beds and staff available to handle the rapid increase in COVID-19 patients, Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center has implemented a two-week pause on adding new non-emergent surgeries that require an in-patient bed at our main campus to the surgery schedule. Urgent and emergent cases are continuing without delay. Surgeries will continue as normal at Our Lady of the Lake Children's Hospital and Our Lady of the Lake Ascension.

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. We are hoping to avoid that as much as we can during the current surge and ensure that patients do not delay the care they need to stay healthy.”