COVID-19: March 25, 2020

Local impact:

• This is extremely concerning: “…in Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, just 15% of adult ICU beds are still available. In those parishes, there are 429 adult ICU beds total, while 65 are free.” (From “It’s like a war zone” at nola.com)

• “Louisiana paper juggles the coronavirus, furloughs” - the Washington Post covers layoffs at The Advocate/Times Picayune

• 163 Louisianans with #Coronavirus are on ventilators.
  
  Even with 300 or so additional ventilators on the way, @LouisianaGov says New Orleans area hospitals are still probably 600 ventilators short. The state will run out, if nothing changes, by the first week in April. @WAFB

  — Matt Houston (@MattCHouston) March 25, 2020

Cases:

National

Source	Old Count	New Count	Increase of	Time
CDC	44,183	54,453	10,270	noon update
J.H.Univ.	52,145	61,167	9,022	1:19 pm update
NYT	49,619	59,502	9,883	12:03 pm update

Louisiana

all data from the Dept Of Health noon update

Where?	Old Count	New Count	Increase of	Deaths
Statewide	1,388	1,795	407	65

New Orleans Metropolitan Area Parishes

Where?	Old Count	New Count	Increase of	Deaths
Orleans	675	827	108	37
Jefferson	293	359	66	7
St. Bernard	19	23	4	1

Other Parishes

Where?	Old Count	New Count	Increase of	Deaths
Lafourche	16	18	2	1
Terrebonne	14	15	1
Lafayette	12	20	8
East Btn Rg	58	75	17	3

Articles:

• What I Learned When My Husband Got Sick With Coronavirus (at nytimes.com)
  

  That time, when we would sit on the couch watching something together, is behind us. Now there is too much rushing back and forth, making sure T has a little dinner — just a tiny bowl of soup, just an appetizer, really, that he is unable to smell, that he fights nausea to choke down — taking his temperature, monitoring his oxygen-saturation levels with the fingertip pulse oximeter brought by a friend from the drugstore on the doctor’s advice, taking him tea, dispensing his meds, washing my hands over and over, texting the doctor to say T is worse again, standing next to him while he coughs into the covers, rubbing his knees through the blankets.
  “You shouldn’t stay here,” he says, but he gets more frightened as night comes, dreading the long hours of fever and soaking sweats and shivering and terrible aches. “This thing grinds you like a mortar,” he says.

• “We will have a devastating recession economy until there’s widespread coronavirus testing.” (at USA Today)

We will be stuck in an endless cycle of lockdown/release for next 18 months, if we do not start mass testing, tracing, & isolating those who are carriers of the virus while pursuing rapid research for antiviral treatment or vaccine. This is the message the public needs to hear.

— Prof. Devi Sridhar (@devisridhar) March 25, 2020

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