Transcript
What inspires you from WFSU Public Media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. My name is Ryan Smith. I am the Vice President, Chief Clinical Officer at Halasou Memorial Health Care. It was bizarre. I recall the day and December, and we were sitting in a board and the room, and our Director of Infection Prevention mentioned that there's a virus overseas, and there's a high chance that it will translate over and come and migrate over to the United States. And we first thought, this is an Ebola discussion. We did not know what COVID-19 was. We didn't know the significant impact that it would have and continue to have. And it did not hit home until January, February, when you started to see the cases migrate from China over to the United States. Tallahassee, Leon County, had one of the lowest mortality rates in the state of Florida. And I'll contribute that a large part to our medical staff. Dr. Watson, if you do not know that name, he's been a mastermind behind the scenes, forming COVID-19 teams and doing research and making sure that we stay best practice for evidence and making sure that we stay very progressive and up to date. And I think a lot of that had impact on, how HALA HACI was impacted, it still was impacted, but when you compare it to other places, we were not severely impacted that other places were. And those things are positive. I think those things that you have to say, we do have good stories around here. We have very successful stories that we thought individuals that would not make it made it, that data and the mortality numbers, and even the total number cases were far lower than what other places experienced. And then the things that come out of it that nobody expected, the relationships, the community bonding that we never had before, those things were incredible. Continue to wash your hands, continue social distance if you're not vaccinated, wear a mask, follow the CDC guidelines, they're changing pretty frequently in vaccinations, vaccination, vaccination, vaccinations. My name is Ryan Smith, I am the Vice President, Chief Clinical Officer at HALA as a Memorial Health Care. You're listening to voices that inspire.