BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – Hospitalizations related to Covid-19 have jumped in Louisiana sitting above 1,200, the highest its been since August.

“This is just the beginning because we haven’t hit capacity yet” said LDH’s Dr. Joe Kanter

The past few weeks, health officials have been warning about holiday gatherings, fearing it could cause cases to spikes and overwhelm hospitals, again.

“We expect, unfortunately, as we go for the next couple of weeks into December that we might see a surge superimposed upon that surge that we’re already in” said Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Monday, Governor John Bel Edwards issued a text statement, saying ” Don’t be fooled by today’s Covid case count – our test numbers are down due to the holiday weekend. We’re still in a pandemic and everyone needs to be careful.

Last week, Kanter said, they’re starting to see trends in hospitals that they wanted to avoid.

“I’ve heard that people have to wait a long time to get a bed when they get admitted from the emergency department. I know one hospital had to use recliners in the E.R. to let people wait while a bed opened up” said Kanter.

As we head into the Christmas holiday, Kanter says he’s hoping we don’t go back to where we were.

“We know very well what trajectory we’re on because we were on a similar trajectory a few months ago” said Kanter.