This is the Coronavirus Briefing, an informed information to the pandemic. Signal up in this article to get this publication in your inbox.

---

When a hurricane and Covid collide

Hurricane Ida manufactured landfall southwest of New Orleans on Sunday as a Class 4 hurricane in advance of relocating into Mississippi, walloping hospitals in two states that were now brimming with Covid clients.

Louisiana has the country’s fifth-maximum Covid hospitalization level Mississippi has the third-maximum. Equally states have coronavirus vaccination premiums perfectly beneath 50 p.c, and lots of of their hospitals were being having difficulties with an onslaught of Covid clients even just before the storm arrived.

Ochsner Health, Louisiana’s greatest healthcare facility method, was doing the job to evacuate 66 patients from two hospitals soon after “winds shattered double-pane windows and blew off roofing, sending h2o trickling into affected individual rooms,” The Advocate documented on Sunday night. In a briefing, Ochsner mentioned the hospitals’ crisis rooms would remain open up in spite of persistent issues with staffing.

As the storm bore down on Baton Rouge, La., officials at Our Woman of the Lake Regional Health care Heart, currently strained by Covid sufferers, predicted to get on much more patients from other amenities in the location, obtaining acquired reinforcements from the condition and the federal governing administration. On Sunday, section of one more hospital’s roof blew off.

In the aftermath of the storm, officials are targeted on restoring power. The entire of New Orleans is without the need