Louisiana healthcare providers are being forced to ration N95 masks as coronavirus patients fill up intensive care unit wards in hospitals.
The New Orleans parishes of Jefferson, St. Bernard, and Plaquemines are among the hardest hit with those hospitals reporting only 15% of adult ICU beds still available for new patients.
“The first night I worked where the entire unit was COVID patients, I got into my car and started bawling,” said a nurse at the Ochsner Medical Center in Jefferson, Louisiana. “When I tell you it’s like a war zone up there, that’s kind of putting it easy.”
A patient care technician at Touro Infirmary said the center is “short of everything,” and she hasn’t been able to change her N95 mask in a week, which is typically effective for around eight hours.
”Everybody is scared to be in the [COVID patient] rooms for a long period of time,” she said. “It seems like we’re not caring for the patient, and that adds stress.”
The alarming spike in cases comes a day after the state was placed under a stay-at-home order, and Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards asked the federal government to declare Louisiana a major disaster zone.
“I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of state and local governments,” wrote Edwards on Tuesday in a letter to the White House.
Ochsner Medical Center’s president, Warner Thomas, stressed that things could turn around if Louisiana residents adhere to strict guidelines suggesting people keep their distance from one another.
“A lot of that is going to depend on whether the social distancing works, and whether we see a change in the trajectory of the spread of the virus over the next several days,” Thomas told Nola.
There have been 1,338 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus in Louisiana, with 20% requiring hospitalizations. Close to 50 people have died from the disease in the state.
