Louisiana hospitals already packed with patients from the latest coronavirus surge had to spend their weekends bracing for Hurricane Ida, a historic category four storm which crashed ashore on Sunday.
'Once again we find ourselves dealing with a natural disaster in the midst of a pandemic,' said Jennifer Avegno, the top health official for New Orleans. She called on residents to 'prepare for both.'
Hurricane Ida hit slammed into the region around midday local time, with windspeeds of 150mph - just 7mph short of the strongest category five hurricane - as the weather event is predicted to be one of the most severe ever to hit the southern state.
It comes as hospitals and their intensive care units are already filled with patients from the fourth surge of the COVID-19 pandemic, this one sparked by the highly contagious Indian Delta variant and low vaccination rates statewide.
Nursing coordinator Beth Springer looked into a patient's room in a COVID ward at the Willis-Knighton Medical Center in Shreveport last Tuesday, as the state sees an uptick in cases
Lauren Debroeck, who is on oxygen as she recovers from COVID-19, talks to her husband, Michael, who also contracted COVID-19 and is being kept alive with the help of an oxygenation machine. As of Sunday, more than 400 patients were on ventilators
By Saturday, nearly 68 percent of all hospital beds in the state were filled
The state is currently in a 'severe outbreak,' according to its COVID-19 dashboard, with a seven-day average of 220 new infections
Daily tallies of new cases went from a few hundred a day through much of the spring and early summer to thousands a day by late July.
Statewide, hospitalizations had peaked at around 2,000 or less in three previous surges. But that number peaked at more than 3,000 in August.
The number reported Saturday was near 2,700, still high enough to stress hospital capacity limits. More than 400 of those patients were on ventilators, according to the state Department of Health.
By Saturday, Business Insider reports, nearly 68 percent of all hospital beds in the state were filled, including about 84 percent of all ICU beds.
The state is currently in a 'severe outbreak,' according to its COVID-19 dashboard, with a seven-day average of 220 new infections.
Last month, CNBC reports, the state saw its largest single day increase in cases with 6,800 new cases reported in a single day.
Just about half of Louisianans have received at least one COVID vaccine dose and 40 percent being fully vaccinated, according to USA Facts.
Meanwhile, the United States is facing a surge in cases with 176,742 new cases reported on Friday and 1,329 new deaths.
About 61.5 percent of all eligible Americans have received at least one COVID vaccine dose, with 52 percent being fully vaccinated.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said evacuation of hospitals in threatened areas is something that would normally be considered under other scenarios, but it´s impractical as COVID-19 patients fill beds in Louisiana and elsewhere.
'That isn´t possible. We don´t have any place to bring those patients. Not in state, not out of state,' Edwards explained.
He warned residents to shelter in place in a news conference Friday, as National Weather Service meteorologist Benjamin Schott noting: 'This will be a life-altering storm for those who aren't prepared.'
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell also called for a mandatory evacuation of any area in New Orleans outside the city's levees, but said the city does not plan to evacuate any of its hospitals and patients will remain in place.
'Hurricane Ida represents a dramatic threat to the people of New Orleans,' she said. 'Time is not on our side.
'The city cannot issue a mandatory evacuation because we don't have the time.'
The storm made landfall in Port Fouchon on the Louisiana coast at 1:02pm EST Sunday
A person walked through the French Quarter of New Orleans on August 29, even after Governor John Bel Edwards warned residents to shelter in place
Ida hit Louisiana Sunday, on the 16th anniversary of Katrina with a 17 mile-wide eye, 150mph winds and 16 foot storm surges that experts fear could overwhelm levees and other flood defenses.
It made landfall in Port Fouchon on the Louisiana coast at 12:02pm CST, as an 'extremely dangerous' category four hurricane.
The hurricane's eye was 17 miles in diameter, with the extreme weather event also set to bring flash floods, thunder, lightning, storm surges and tornados to areas in or close to its path.
Nola.com reported that officials are increasingly worried Ida's foot storm surges could overcome levees - banks of earth, often topped with concrete barriers, built to offer protection from flood waters.
Jefferson Parish, which sits close to New Orleans, is said to be particularly vulnerable to a breach.
This would be the first time the newly-upgraded defenses have been breached since they were strengthened in the wake of Katrina, which struck on August 29 2005 and killed 1,800 people.
President Joe Biden has already approved a federal emergency declaration for the state, with FEMA expected to send nearly 150 medical personnel and almost 50 ambulances to the Gulf Coast to help the already struggling hospitals - many of which have already begun delaying emergency procedures and patient transfers.
A satellite image showed Hurricane Ida as it approached Louisiana on Sunday
It had a 17 mile-wide eye, with 150mph winds and 16 foot storm surges
Officials at Ochsner Health, which runs the largest hospital network in the state, said Saturday that they considered evacuating some of their facilities closer to the coast but that wasn't possible considering how packed other hospitals are in their network. Roughly 15 of their hospitals are in areas potentially affected by Ida.
But they did evacuate some individual patients with particular medical needs from smaller hospitals in more rural areas to their larger facilities.
'COVID has 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 as prepared as it can be.
Hulefeld said three days ago they ordered 10 days worth of supplies for facilities in areas that might be affected by Ida and everything has arrived. Each facility has backup power that's been tested and a backup fuel truck on site. Many of their hospitals also have water wells should city water go out.
'We´re as ready as we can be,' he said.
Jeff Elder, a doctor who is also the medical director for emergency management at LCMC Health, said that the system´s six hospitals will go into lockdown mode Sunday morning.
The staff who were going to stay at the hospitals for the duration of the storm were coming in Saturday and Sunday morning and would sleep at the hospital.
Elder said one of the first things their hospitals do when storms come in is discharge any patients who are able to leave. However, their patient load is higher than usual because of the pandemic so they´re not able to reduce by that much.
But he said the hospitals in the system are much more robust since 2005´s Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people after flood defenses failed.
'We´ve learned a lot since 2005,' he said.
Key pieces of infrastructure are now raised to keep them out of flooding. For example, at University Medical Center in New Orleans, which was built after Katrina, the generator is raised, diesel supplies are protected and the first floor doesn´t have essential services so even if flood waters get that high nothing essential is lost.
All of the hospitals in the system also now have generator backup power, Elder said.
And he stressed that communication is much better between hospitals in the hospital system as well as with various levels of government than it was back then.