A week later, the first resident, a 56-years old, was transferred to the hospital for breathing problems. The next day, February 19, she was passed out by the next unconscious room. A test made the sixty-year-old Life Life’s first Covid-19 case a few days later. “February 19th marks the beginning of the outbreak for us. In the beginning, however, there were no Covid 19 alarm bells. We had pneumonia and flu bells, ”Killian told the Seattle Times about the previously unknown virus. In the coming days, two more residents of the facility specializing in short-term care after operations were brought to the hospital. Both died. Before the 73-year-old patient died on March 2, the doctors showed her Sars-CoV-2. By March 7, another 24 residents had died, one in three of the approximately 180 people employed by Life Care had symptoms. However, it took another day for the first civil protection team to appear in protective suits and breathing masks in Kirkland. So far, health authorities have registered 37Covid-19 deaths in Life Care.
Limited number of tests
In spite of the quarantine, family members have been coming to the nursing home for days to give comfort to their relatives through the closed windows. There is no shortage of blame. Lori Spencer had brought her mother Jodie Shape to Life Care on February 26, where the eighty-one-year-old was supposed to recover after a stomach operation. As Spencer told the Seattle Times, the home management had concealed the corona outbreak. In addition, Killian and his staff allegedly decided not to cancel the Mardi Gras carnival, which was planned for the same day. As the American media reported, the nursing home only attempted corona tests for all residents on March 7th. The nurses had to wait another week.
In addition to the lack of protective clothing, the limited number of tests and the exchange of nurses with other homes are said to have contributed to the spread of the virus. Home director Killian meanwhile refers to the responsibility of the government and state health authorities. A facility like Life Care is overwhelmed with such a crisis.
3. New Orleans hotspot: “Viruses from the car too”
After Kirkland in Washington State and New York, New Orleans, the most populous city in the southern state of Louisiana, is now threatening to become an American epicenter of the corona pandemic. Louisiana’s health authorities had more than 2,300 infections by Friday, almost half of them in the city on the Mississippi known as “Big Easy”. More than one in two of the 83 Covid-19 deaths in the state so far comes from New Orleans.
In addition, according to a study in Louisiana, the Sars-CoV-2 virus is currently spreading faster than anywhere else in the world. “If the infections continue to grow so rapidly, we will lack ventilators in the first week of April,” warned state governor John Bel Edwards. “Whether it will come to this depends on whether the curve can be flattened or other devices can be found.” The current increase in the number of corona cases in Louisiana is similar to the course of the epidemics in Spain and Italy.
Experts also blamed the traditional carnival parades through the French Quarter in New Orleans for the unexpectedly violent outbreak. From the beginning of January to February 25, almost 1.5 million tourists visited the city to celebrate Mardi Gras. Health officials reported the first corona infection in New Orleans on March 9. “Mardi Gras provided the best conditions for the virus to spread,” said Rebekah Gee, until a few weeks ago the state health minister and now head of medical care at Louisiana State University, Reuters news agency. “People share drinking cups and space in the crowd. Not only plastic chains were thrown from the carnival wagons, but also coronaviruses. ”
