LOUISVILLE, KY - With Kentucky’s COVID-19 case count climbing, Dr. Paul Schulz, an infectious disease specialist with the Norton Infectious Disease Institute says frontline healthcare workers have more tools in their arsenal to combat the pandemic.

“If you’re coming into a hospital in November 2020, you’re getting a much different and much better care model than if you’re coming in March,” he said.

Infectious disease experts have found treatments like remdesivir and the monoclonal antibody treatment from Eli Lilly and Company have proved to be life-saving.

“Some of us think that’s probably why you less mortality in the actual numbers because as cases have gone up, you don’t see the same amount of mortality as we did in the beginning,” said Dr. Schulz.

UK Health, Baptist Health Lexington and Norton Healthcare are currently hosting Janssen clinical trials for a COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Innovation helps spur on excitement about products like Eli Lilly’s antibody treatment is that it explores outpatient treatment strategies.

“Experience now mostly has been with inpatient interventions although the Lily product changes that. It gets into the out-patient category and that’s exciting too because if you treat people earlier and avoid severe illnesses and hospitalizations, that would be great,” he said.

History has shown vaccines prevented so many other diseases from continuing to be a problem. But, Dr. Schulz's message for the public is to not solely wait on a vaccine or to rely on current or future treatments. He wants you to follow the public safety guidelines.

“What I would ask people to think about is that there is a health care system that has a capacity and you don’t want to challenge that capacity. It’s not just things like hospital rooms, beds, and ventilators it’s also people,” he said.

He expects the medical and scientific community to further find further treatments to help treat people who wind up seeing COVID-19 care in hospitals

“We feel that there is some progress. Not where we need to be but some improvements which is good for everyone.”