New Orleans: Louisiana Hospital has been packed with patients from the latest Coronavirus surge now preparing for a strong category 4 storm, which is expected to hit weeks to land.
“Once again we find ourselves dealing with natural disasters in the middle of a pandemic,” said Jennifer Avegno, the best health official for New Orleans.
He called residents to “prepare both.” Hurricane Ida is expected to slam into the end of the week along the coast of Louisiana.
It is expected to be in the power of category 4 on the mainland with strong winds of up to 130 mph (209 kph).
The storm comes as a hospital and their intensive care unit has been filled with patients from a surge in the fourth pandemic, this one is triggered by a highly contagious Delta variant and a low level of vaccination throughout the state.
Calculation of new cases every day switch from several hundred a day through most of the spring and early summer to thousands a day at the end of July.
In all states, hospitalization has peaked around 2,000 or less in three previous surges.
But that number peaked more than 3,000 in August.
The number reported Saturday near 2,700, was still high enough to make hospital stress.
Gubern John Bel Edwards said the evacuation of hospitals in a threatened area was something that was usually considered with other scenarios, but it was not practical as a Covid-19 patient filled the bed in Louisiana and elsewhere.
“It’s impossible.
We have no place to bring those patients.
Not in the state, not out of the country,” Edwards explained.
Officials at Ochsner Health, who run the largest hospital network in the state, said Saturday that they consider evacuating some of their facilities closer to the beach but it is impossible to remember how other hospital packing is on their network.
About 15 of their hospitals were in areas that were potentially influenced by Ida.
But they evacuate some individual patients with certain medical needs from smaller hospitals in more rural areas to their larger facilities.
“Covid certainly added a challenge to this storm,” said Mike Hulefeld, executive vice president and Chief Operating Officer of Ochsner Health.
But the hospital chain says in other ways it feels like that.
Hulefeld said three days ago they ordered supplies worth 10 days for facilities in areas that might be influenced by Ida and everything had arrived.
Each facility has a reserve power that has been tested and spare fuel trucks at the location.
Many of their hospitals also have water wells if the city water comes out.
“We are ready as we can,” said Hulefeld.
Jeff Elder, a doctor who is also a medical director for emergency management at LCMC Health, said that six system hospitals will enter Sunday morning locking mode.
The staff who will stay at the hospital during the duration of the storm come on Saturday and Sunday morning and will sleep in the hospital.
Elder said one of the first things did their hospital do when the storm in was removing patients who could leave.
However, the burden of their patients is higher than usual because of the pandemic so they cannot reduce that much.
But he said the hospital in the system was much stronger since 2005 Hurricane Katrina.
“We have learned a lot since 2005,” he said.
The pieces of the key infrastructure are now raised to prevent it from flooding.
For example, at the University Medical Center in New Orleans, which was built after Katrina, the generator was raised, the supply of diesel protected and the first floor did not have important services so even if the flood water was increasingly important.
All hospitals in the system have the power of reserve generators, said Elder.
He also stressed that communication is now much better between hospitals in the hospital system and also with various levels of government.