The President authorizes the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of critical personal protective gear and respirators as the state works to secure those resources locally.
Governor Edwards says the state has enough space to house COVID cases, but before you get equipment, you need doctors and nurses to use it.
“We actually have a strike team that has been working for several days at the Department of Health identifying multiple strategies to make sure that we can staff new beds in order to increase our capacity,” says Edwards.
The Governor called the model showing the New Orleans area capacity being topped in 7-10 days a “worst-case scenario”.
Edwards is asking all companies with a stockpile of N95 masks to call the Department of Economic Development and be generous in donating them.
“We are making maximum use of N95 respirators that have been authorized by the FDA to be used in the healthcare setting that you would typically see these in industrial settings,” says Edwards.
N95 masks are one aspect of PPE, or personal protective equipment, that hospitals are desperate to acquire to keep their healthcare workers safe while dealing with the infected.
Edwards says they’re also looking to move respirators in surgical centers that perform optional, or elective surgeries, into frontline hospitals.
“If an individual is hospitalized due to the coronavirus there is a good chance that that individual is going to need to be placed on a respirator, and we only have so many respirators in our state,” says Edwards.
A lack of respirators is reported at the heart of many of the COVID-19 deaths in Italy.
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