As the number of coronavirus cases in Louisiana continued their ascent on Saturday, crews rushed to put the finishing touches on a makeshift, 1,000-bed hospital inside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, scheduled to open Monday to ease the strain on area hospitals.
Hospital beds fill individual rooms of the Medical Monitoring Station at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center amid the coronavirus pandemic in New Orleans, Saturday, April 4, 2020. The Convention Center is ready to start accepting less fragile COVID-19 positive patients from hospitals starting Monday to alleviate stress on hospitals. They will not accept walk-ins.
The capacity of the field hospital — being built in a matter of days — can be increased to 2,000 beds by the end of April if necessary, demonstrating the sheer magnitude of the crisis posed by the COVID-19 virus, according to Assistant State Health Officer Dr. Joseph Kanter.
“This isn’t even halfway over — it is not time to let up,” Kanter said as he urged residents to continue obeying government stay-at-home orders meant to curb the spread of the highly contagious and lethal respiratory disease.
Standing in a convention hall housing a football field’s worth of white tents, nurses’ stations and portable handwashing basins, Kanter cast a quick glance around and said, “How great would it be if we didn’t need half this?”
The number of state residents stricken with COVID-19 jumped Saturday to 12,946, an increase of about 2,200 from the previous day. The New Orleans area continues to be the epicenter of the outbreak in Louisiana, with 3,966 known cases and 154 deaths reported out of Orleans Parish.
Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser tours the Medical Monitoring Station facilities and operations at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center amid the coronavirus pandemic in New Orleans, Saturday, April 4, 2020. The Convention Center is ready to start accepting less fragile COVID-19 positive patients from hospitals starting Monday to alleviate stress on hospitals. They will not accept walk-ins.
Neighboring Jefferson Parish has another 3,008 known cases, 95 of them fatal.
To what extent Saturday’s hike resulted from an increased testing rate is unclear. A total of 4,853 new test results came in. That was higher than the average the state was registering earlier in the week, but exactly how many of those were older results wasn’t clear.
The number of new deaths reported Saturday was lower than on Friday — 39 as opposed to 60 — but higher than Thursday’s toll of 37.
On the contrary, the number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital and on life-saving ventilator machines was higher than Friday: 1,726 and 571, respectively. Those will not alleviate the state’s concerns about a looming shortage in hospital bed space and ventilators, though officials announced Saturday that Louisiana would receive an additional 200 ventilators from the national stockpile.
Keeping bed space in New Orleans area hospitals as ample as possible is where the makeshift hospital at the convention center comes in.
New Orleans officials recommended on Friday that residents wear cloth masks to slow the spread of the coronavirus, as cases in the city increa…
The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center has been shut for conventions and events since March, and was converted for use as a recovery space for less severe coronavirus cases in April.
The pop up facility — which is costing more than $90 million to build, equip and staff, largely through a contractor — is meant to treat COVID-19 patients who no longer need acute treatment at a hospital but still require care they can’t get at home, said Dr. Meghan Maslanka, the site’s medical operations manager.
Such patients — who need a hospital referral to be admitted — will be treated and observed in tent rooms that are about the size of backyard sheds.
Arranged in pods of 14, covering the length and width of a series of convention halls, the isolation tents are air-conditioned but sparsely furnished. Besides a bed, pillow and blanket, there’s a folding chair, a TV tray and an office-style telephone. There’s also an electric outlet, a small potted plant, an IV stand and other medical supplies that may be of use for an around-the-clock staff including nurses, nurse practitioners, doctors, respiratory therapists, social workers and pharmacists.
People clean up a nurse station in the Medical Monitoring Station (MMS) at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center amid the coronavirus pandemic in New Orleans, Saturday, April 4, 2020. The Convention Center is ready to start accepting less fragile COVID-19 positive patients from hospitals starting Monday to alleviate stress on hospitals. They will not accept walk-ins.
During a tour of one of the pods Saturday, a fishbowl-style surveillance camera looked over a nurses’ station and a common space outside the tents. Framed posters with inspirational quotes hung outside some of the tents awaiting patients.
President Donald Trump said Friday that officials from the two largest hospital conglomerates in the New Orleans area had assured him they "cu…
“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning how to dance in the rain,” read one attributed to Vivian Greene. Nearby are Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous words: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
In a parking lot across the street, crews and construction vehicles were in the late stages of standing up a small village of double-wide trailers containing rooms to temporarily house people who were tested at hospitals for COVID-19 and need an isolated place to await their results.
One of those rooms shown on the media tour had two countertops, an electrical outlet, an office chair, a mattress, a thermostat, and a window with the blinds drawn. To access one of those rooms, a hospital referral is also required, said officials, who repeatedly noted that walk-ups to either of the areas at the convention center were not allowed.
While the field hospital should be ready for admissions Monday, officials don’t expect many to be arriving until the days after, Kanter said.
Staff writers Jeff Adelson and Sam Karlin contributed to this report.
The Convention Center is ready to start accepting less fragile COVID-19 positive patients from hospitals starting Monday to alleviate stress o…
