Governor John Bel Edwards says by the end of this week the New Orleans area could reach its ventilator capacity. The state health department reports about 400 patients are currently using the machines to help COVID-19 patients breathe. Edwards says they are seeking over 12,000 ventilators.
“5,000 from the national stockpile, at least 7,000 from private vendors, thus far we’ve received exactly 192 and that’s over the last several weeks now,” said Edwards.
Edwards says the New Orleans area could run out of bed space by April 10th. But a makeshift hospital is going up inside the New Orleans Convention Center. The governor says 1,000 hospital beds will be ready within a week inside the convention center.
“Patients who come here are not going to be fragile, they are not going to need a vent, and we believe that they will only need to be here for a relatively short period of time before they could be discharged home,” said Edwards.
Edwards says he’ll likely extend his stay-at-home order beyond April 13th as Louisiana ranks second in the nation in per capita deaths related to COVID-19.
“We have to work very hard to get in front of this virus because we are playing catchup and it moves fast and it can be deadly as we know,” said Edwards.
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