By Dan Hounsell, Senior Editor, Facility Market

As if a pandemic isn’t enough. Hospitals along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have been dealing with a new wave of COVID-19 cases, threatening healthcare capacity and emergency services. Now, after Hurricane Ida made landfall, the region is seeing a collision of two public health emergencies in areas still grappling with the most critical wave of the pandemic, according to Houma Today.

Hurricane Ida slammed onto the Louisiana coast on Sunday as a Category 4 storm with punishing winds of 150 mph, life-threatening storm surge and potentially catastrophic rainfall. It first made landfall near Port Fourchon, less than 100 miles south of New Orleans. A short time later it made a second landfall a few miles to the north, near Galliano. 

In Louisiana, COVID-19 hospitalizations peaked at 3,022 on Aug. 17 and began dropping as the state struggled to find beds and staff. But the COVID-19 hospitalizations are still comparatively high, filling critical care beds across the state. 

COVID-19 cases in Alabama continue to climb, as officials have been forced to call in federal medical teams to coastal areas crushed by an onslaught of critically ill patients. Two mobile morgue units were dispatched to the area last week in anticipation of a fatality spike, and hospitals around the state have been forced to treat ICU patients in hallway gurneys and emergency departments as ICU beds have bottomed out. 

Ken McDowell, safety officer at Memorial Hospital in Gulfport, Mississippi, says the hospital has invested in hardening the facility to ensure it can meet the needs of the communities, adding that the organization is essentially implementing two emergency plans at one time for the pandemic and the hurricane.