Louisiana, particularly the New Orleans area, has been a hotbed for coronavirus infections, possibly due to the Mardi Gras festivities held in late February. Louisiana is the fourth state to have a major disaster declared by the federal government; California, New York and Washington are the others.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards says health care capacity in the New Orleans area could be overwhelmed by April 4. His disaster declaration request says “effective response” to the crisis is “beyond the capabilities of the state and local governments” and requests supplemental resources for governments and disaster relief organizations as well as insurance compensation for disaster-related losses.
Individual assistance could include unemployment assistance, disaster care management, crisis counseling, and assistance with medical, childcare and funeral expenses. Edwards is requesting 100 percent federal funding for emergency work under the Stafford Act and 100 percent federal funding for “homeland security defense activities.”
As of the most recent update mid-day Tuesday, Louisiana had 1,388 reported cases of COVID-19 and 46 deaths. Orleans Parish alone had 675 cases and 26 deaths, while neighboring Jefferson Parish had 293 cases and six deaths.
Sixty-three per cent of patients in intensive care in UK hospitals because of the killer virus are overweight, obese or morbidly obese.
While the average age of people suffering the most serious symptoms of coronavirus is 64, 37 per cent are under the age of 60.
The Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre analysed all admissions to critical care units in the UK up until midnight last Thursday.
At that time, there were 194 coronavirus patients in ICU. That number is thought to have soared in the last four days.
The document provided the first in-depth look at patients who have needed round-the-clock care and boosted medics’ understanding of the virus that has crippled society.
Its finding that obese people are at risk of serious complications from COVID-19 will be concerning for health bosses, as two thirds of adults in the country fall into the category.
And more than a third of critically ill patients being under 60 shows it is not only the very elderly who are at risk.
The report also found that most coronavirus patients in intensive care were male, 71 per cent of all cases, and only 18 patients (9 per cent) had ‘severe co-morbidities’, such as underlying heart conditions or lung disease; while two patients had been pregnant within the last six weeks.
Studies have shown obese people are more likely to suffer serious complications or die from infections, such as the flu.
Doctors say the immune systems of fat people are constantly ramped up as they try to protect and repair the damage inflammation causes to cells.
Using all its energy fending off inflammation means the body’s defence system has few resources left to defend against a new infection like COVID-19.
Obese people also tend to eat a diet with very little fiber and antioxidants - which keep the immune system healthy - such as fruit and vegetables.
Excess weight makes it more difficult for the diaphragm and lungs to expand and inhale oxygen. Starved of oxygen, organs will begin to fail.
“Forever Ambergris,” from Tales from the Crypt #44 (November 1954)
A wonderfully punny title, a grotesquely convoluted plot, and some beautifully squicky Jack Davis art = my platonic ideal of a great EC horror tale.
“We have an observation unit in the hospital, and we have been admitting patients that had tested positive or are presumptive positive — these are patients that had been in contact with people who were positive. We go and check vitals on patients every four hours, and some are on a continuous cardiac monitor, so we see that their heart rate has a sudden increase or decrease, or someone goes in and sees that the patient is struggling to breathe or is unresponsive. That seems to be what happens to a lot of these patients: They suddenly become unresponsive or go into respiratory failure.”
“It’s called acute respiratory distress syndrome, ARDS. That means the lungs are filled with fluid. And it’s notable for the way the X-ray looks: The entire lung is basically whited out from fluid. Patients with ARDS are extremely difficult to oxygenate. It has a really high mortality rate, about 40%. The way to manage it is to put a patient on a ventilator. The additional pressure helps the oxygen go into the bloodstream.
“Normally, ARDS is something that happens over time as the lungs get more and more inflamed. But with this virus, it seems like it happens overnight. When you’re healthy, your lung is made up of little balloons. Like a tree is made out of a bunch of little leaves, the lung is made of little air sacs that are called the alveoli. When you breathe in, all of those little air sacs inflate, and they have capillaries in the walls, little blood vessels. The oxygen gets from the air in the lung into the blood so it can be carried around the body.
“Typically with ARDS, the lungs become inflamed. It’s like inflammation anywhere: If you have a burn on your arm, the skin around it turns red from additional blood flow. The body is sending it additional nutrients to heal. The problem is, when that happens in your lungs, fluid and extra blood starts going to the lungs. Viruses can injure cells in the walls of the alveoli, so the fluid leaks into the alveoli. A telltale sign of ARDS in an X-ray is what’s called ‘ground glass opacity,’ like an old-fashioned ground glass privacy window in a shower. And lungs look that way because fluid is white on an X-ray, so the lung looks like white ground glass, or sometimes pure white, because the lung is filled with so much fluid, displacing where the air would normally be.”
