LAFAYETTE, La. — Parts of Louisiana are “days away” from seeing medics unable to bring patients to the state’s overwhelmed hospitals, the top medical officer for Acadian Ambulance warned Monday.
Louisiana reported 65 new deaths and 13,239 cases of COVID-19 cases over the weekend. The number of hospitalized with COVID-19 continues to climb, setting daily records. As of Sunday there were 2,956 patients hospitalized across the state. The health department says 90 percent of those patients are unvaccinated.
In an interview with CBS News’ David Begnaud, Dr. Charles Burnell said that paramedics in Acadiana have already started “treating in place,” meaning that they are treating patients at home after deeming that they would not benefit from being brought to a hospital.
“We haven't had to refuse anyone transport yet,” Burnell said. “We are days away from that happening right now. Less than a week.”
Gov. John Bel Edwards warned that Louisiana’s hospitals are struggling with an avalanche of coronavirus cases that threatens to crater the state’s health care delivery system. State and local health care leaders are increasingly sounding the alarm about the risks of overloaded facilities with too few staff to handle the crush of coronavirus patients on top of the car crash victims, heart attack patients, and others.
“I would liken it to a storm that is going on inside there that no one sees behind those walls,” Burnell said.
In the state’s Acadiana region alone there were 405 patients hospitalized, about 100 more than at any other point in the pandemic. The LDH reported just four ICU beds available in that region which includes seven nearby parishes surrounding Lafayette. In the southwest region near Lake Charles, the ICU situation was even worse, with just two available ICUs on Sunday.
Dr. Amanda Louge, chief medical officer at Ochsner Lafayette General described the situation as “close to a breaking point.” Logue said that it is not uncommon for patients to wait seven to nine hours for an emergency room bed.
If the surge of COVID-19 patients grows larger, Logue says the next steps involve shutting down clinic visits to anything but the most urgent needs so doctors, nurses and other staff can go to hospital bedsides.
The Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate reports that the state’s smaller hospitals have nowhere to turn after some larger hospitals have begun refusing transfers.
“The system is so packed that people who come in with a stroke, with a heart attack, with life-threatening conditions, we are unable to deal with it,” Our Lady of the Angels Hospital, Dr. Garland Anderson told the newspaper. “We are unable to transfer patients to any hospital in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Missouri. There are no beds anywhere.”
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.