Don Lemon Speaks with Covid Patients, One Previously Vax-Hesitant Woman Tells Him, ‘Everybody Ought to Try to Get It’

CNN’s Don Lemon returned to the Baton Rouge hospital where he was born in 1966 to report on Louisiana’s Covid-19 crisis. Like other southern states, Louisiana is experiencing a spike in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths thanks to prevailing vaccine hesitancy among residents. About 38% of people there have been vaccinated, compared to about 50% nationwide.

The Chief Medical Officer of Baton Rouge General Hospital Mid City told Lemon, “I have never seen one illness occupy 90% of the resources and 90% of the beds.”

He cited the Delta variant of Covid-19 as the main culprit. “It’s catching people that have not been vaccinated.”

Lemon described the hospital as “bursting at the seams.”

The CNN host spoke with a few Covid patients, including a man identified as Jim, whose brother was also infected and hospitalized, but has since been discharged. Lemon asked him how he’s doing.

“Doing good,” said Jim, who said he had been in the ICU for three days. “Doing a lot better.”

He said having Covid, “feels like you got your lungs just clamped down.”

Lemon asked why he hadn’t received the vaccine.

Jim said he just hadn’t gotten around to it and told Lemon he isn’t anti-vaccine. He said he regrets not getting the vaccine.

“What do you say to folks?” asked Lemon.

“Open your eyes,” replied Jim. “Take heed to this.”

Lemon spoke to another patient, who went to the hospital after she thought she was having a heart attack.

“Why didn’t you get vaccinated?” asked Lemon.

“I wanted to wait,” she said. “I wanted this first batch go through, you know, see how it worked.”

A third patient Lemon spoke with told him she didn’t get vaccinated because she was “just apprehensive.”

She then said the vaccine is “very needful” and said she plans to get vaccinated when she’s medically able. She explained she’s not against vaccines but the Covid vaccine “seemed so different.”

“I think everybody ought to try to get it,” she said.

Watch above via CNN.

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