The Lake Charles region has fewer than two dozen ICU beds available as the area has been slammed by rising COVID-19 cases. Region Five Regional Public Health Medical Director Lacey Cavanaugh says 67 of their 89 ICU beds are in use.
“We do not have as many ICU beds to begin with as many of the other larger regions that serve a larger population and I think that makes us particularly vulnerable to shortages,” said Cavanaugh.
Lake Charles, Jefferson Davis, and Cameron Parish all have a COVID incident rate of over 240 per 100,000, some of the highest in the state. Cavanaugh says that’s causing hospitalizations to pile up.
“As those cases are rising we are starting to see things get short. We are not out of capacity but certainly it is something that is being watched very closely,” said Cavanaugh.
These numbers are behind only the Acadiana region for highest rate in the state.
For most of the state this dramatic rise in new cases began around mid to late June, but Cavanaugh says their issues began earlier than that.
“I do think it was happening before the mid-June period. I really think we began to show some rise in our numbers in early June following Memorial Day,” said Cavanaugh.
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