Ochsner Health System will now test every patient who checks into their hospitals for the coronavirus, whether or not they are at the hospital for treatment for the infectious disease, executives told reporters in a call on Thursday.

Eventually, the hospital will also test all employees.

Patients will be tested whether or not they are in the hospital for treatment for the infectious disease. Visitors to clinics won't be tested, but anyone receiving emergency care, non-elective surgery, expectant mothers and anyone staying overnight in the hospital will be.

Inpatients will receive a rapid test, which will return a result in under 15 minutes. The test is not yet widely available for patients not checking into the hospital.

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Widespread testing of patients is an attempt to learn more about who is susceptible to coronavirus and to limit the spread to hospital workers who may be performing procedures that put them at risk.

“Louisiana now has the highest per capita rate of testing in the country,” said Warner Thomas, Ochsner's president and CEO. “A lot of that has to do with a lot of work we’ve done at Ochsner.”

Executives said they had not seen a big uptick in positive tests since beginning to test patients without COVID-19 symptoms this week.

Overall, the hospital system had tested around 14,600 patients as of Thursday morning. Around 5,600 of those were positive with around 800 are currently hospitalized. Thomas said 930 hospitalized COVID-19 patients have been discharged from Ochsner.

The hospital will also start testing as many of its employees as possible once they receive an antibody test, which can detect if someone has ever been exposed to the virus and may now have some immunity. Frontline workers who work directly with patients will be given priority, but the goal is to test every employee. The hospital employs around 25,000 people.

The antibody test will give the hospital insight into when and how many people were exposed before March 9, when the first case in Louisiana was announced, though executives and many others have speculated it was circulating in the community long before that.

“When you talk to ER doctors, they were seeing patients with respiratory symptoms but were flu negative at the time,” said Dr. Robert Hart, Ochsner's chief medical officer. “There could be a subset of the population that's already been exposed to COVID-19 and it would be good to know that ... for peace of mind if you’re an employee taking care of these patients.”

A representative from LCMC, the other large network of hospitals in the New Orleans area, said they are still screening patients at every hospital, but are not yet testing every patient. Other hospitals in the area did not return phone calls about testing protocols for patients.

On the call with reporters, Ochsner also said lower numbers of patients on ventilators are reflecting new practices that use the life support machines as a last resort.

“Initially, (there was) a move to intubate patients early on in the process to control their airway,” said Hart. “Now, as we’re beginning to learn, these patients look like they do better if we ... keep them on high-flow nasal cannula, CPAP or BiPap and avoid intubation at all costs,” he said, referring to less invasive ways to deliver more oxygen to patients struggling to breathe.