The near-empty French Market in the French Quarter area of New Orleans on Wednesday.
Photo: jonathan bachman/ReutersLouisiana is fast emerging as a hot spot in the coronavirus pandemic, with a sharp jump in cases, some stemming from a retirement community.
The state recorded the world’s highest average daily growth rate, 65.7%, in the first 15 days since an initial diagnosis, according to an analysis done for state health officials by University of Louisiana at Lafayette economics professor Gary Wagner.
The state’s first diagnosis came on March 9 and it now has 1,795 confirmed cases, according to the health department.
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As of Wednesday, the state reported 65 deaths linked to the novel coronavirus. That is the fifth-highest tally of any state and represents a sharp jump from 14 deaths last Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The crisis is most acute in New Orleans, which has had 37 deaths—third behind New York City and King County, Wash., among U.S. cities and counties, Johns Hopkins figures show.
“The trajectory of our case growth continues to be very alarming. We have not begun to flatten the curve yet, and that is the No. 1 message that I am trying to deliver to the state of Louisiana. We have a long way to go,” Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, said at a news conference Wednesday.
Some Louisiana hospitals are racing to convert wings into intensive-care units to handle Covid-19 patients. Mr. Edwards said the New Orleans region risks running out of critical ventilators the first week of April.
The governor said officials distributed 100 ventilators in the New Orleans area and expect to get 200 more of the devices in coming days. Even so, he said, the area will still be about 600 ventilators short.
President Trump on Tuesday issued a major disaster declaration for Louisiana, the fifth state to receive the designation, clearing the way for millions of dollars in federal funding.
Lydia Williams Buckley with her father, Frank Williams, who died in New Orleans last week from coronavirus.
Photo: Lydia Williams BuckleyMr. Edwards said the state received 100,000 N95 masks, mostly from the federal stockpile, and has been promised 100,000 more by Apple Inc. More supplies are needed, he said. “We zero-out the warehouse every day.”
Meanwhile, the virus is exacting a mounting personal toll. Lydia Buckley said she learned her 90-year-old father, Frank Williams, had the virus when he died Friday. Mr. Williams lived in the skilled-nursing wing of Lambeth House, a New Orleans retirement home hit by a Covid-19 outbreak. Lambeth House officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.
It pains her that she couldn’t visit her father in his last days due to a lockdown spurred by the virus, she said, and that she now has to delay the funeral arrangements he wanted.
A business is boarded up on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans.
Photo: jonathan bachman/ReutersLouisianans like her have been tested by many natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but nothing like the current pandemic, she said. “We went through Katrina and always knew there would be an end to that. This is so unknown,” she said.
Nurses and other medical professionals across the state are treating patients without always feeling they have enough protective gear and worried about infecting family members, said Thea Ducrow, executive director of the Louisiana State Nurses Association.
Nurses have told her they have had to wear the same surgical mask for an entire shift, she said, and others complain that the lack of a decontamination area at work means they have to shed scrubs in their garage or carport to reduce the risk to relatives.
Latonya Brumfield, a registered nurse who works at two hospitals in Baton Rouge, said fear of a wave of coronavirus cases is fueling the outrage she and fellow nurses have felt as many people seemed to shrug off admonitions to stay home and practice social distancing.
“It’s like preparing for an invisible hurricane. We don’t know when landfall will be,” Ms. Brumfield said. “We know our hospitals are not equipped for what’s coming.”
Ochsner Health, a large hospital network in the state, said Wednesday it had 271 confirmed coronavirus patients and nearly 300 suspected cases. Its flagship hospital outside New Orleans is converting space for 96 new intensive-care beds, and redirecting anesthesiologists and surgeons to help treat coronavirus patients.
“Everybody is stressed. It’s a challenging time,” said Warner Thomas, Ochsner’s president and chief executive. “I see people kind of leaning in and taking great care of folks.”
He expressed hope that mitigation efforts such as Mr. Edwards’s stay-at-home directive will help reduce the spread. If not, he said, “I think we’re going to have a capacity challenge and need to move to other plans to open up additional bed capacity.”
In the New Orleans region, just 56 of 431 adult ICU beds are available, the state health department said.
Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, 80 miles northwest of New Orleans, had 25 patients with Covid-19 on Wednesday evening. All were being treated in newly converted ICUs.
So far the hospital has enough masks and other protective gear for medical staff, many of whom feel trepidation, said Christopher Thomas, medical director of quality and patient safety at the center.
“I have to create an environment that there’s not a point during the day where they go, ‘We might not have what we need to keep ourselves safe,’ ” he said. For Dr. Thomas, the main concern is a potential crush of cases that could overwhelm the hospital’s beefed-up capacity.
“I don’t have fear of the virus,” he said. “I have fear of the volume.”
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Write to Scott Calvert at scott.calvert@wsj.com
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