Coronavirus: Louisiana health system could be overwhelmed by early April, warns governor

Many states reporting shortage of basic medical supplies and equipment

Louisiana’s healthcare system could be overwhelmed by the coronavirus crisis by early April, the states’ governor has warned.

While states such as New York and Washington have received national and even international attention, others are also struggling to combat the virus and its impact on people and resources.

In recent days, Louisiana has emerged one of the new hot spots for Covid-10 with around 140 deaths, the third highest in the nation.

Speaking on Sunday, governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, said his healthcare system could be overwhelmed by the early part of next month.

Appearing on ABC News, he said the cases of the virus were “surging our capacity now with a spread that is growing faster than we would like to see”.

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“We remain on a trajectory, really, to overwhelm our capacity to deliver health care,” he said.

“By the end of the first week in April, we think the first real issue is going to be ventilators. And we think it’s about the fourth or fifth of April before, down in the New Orleans area, we’re unable to put people on ventilators who need them. And then several days later, we will be out of beds.”

Mr Edwards is one of many governors struggling to obtain sufficient quantities of basic equipment such as ventilators, masks and hospital gowns, amid criticism that the Trump administration has been slow to step up.

Over the weekend, New York governor Andrew Cuomo defended his stockpiling of ventilators, saying his officials predicted the apex of cases would come in three weeks.

“What we’re doing is we’re planning for that apex, we’re planning for the critical need, and making sure we have the equipment the staff, the beds for that critical need,” he said.

The Hill said Louisiana had documented 3,315 cases in the state, with 137 deaths. A total of 927 people have been taken to hospital with 336 on ventilators, according to the state’s health department.

On Sunday, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, repeated a commonly expressed criticism of the way the nation was responding, namely that states were bidding between themselves for personal protective equipment (PPE).

She told CNN in some cases, contracts already in place have been set aside, delayed or cancelled with the goods instead going to the federal government.

“It’s a source of frustration not unique to Michigan, but it’s a unique situation that we have in our country right now and it’s…creating a lot more problems for all of us,” she said.

“We the states are trying to actively get every piece of PPE that we can. We’re bidding against one another, and in some cases the federal government is taking priority.”