'This is in fact a crisis': New Orleans to offer 'drive-through' coronavirus testing as city considers curfew

Hospitality industry braces for impact as Louisiana prepares to roll out test centres

New Orleans will be one of four US cities to partner with the federal government to test a drive-through coronavirus testing centre programme, as officials discuss whether to put a citywide curfew in place.

Officials will also determine whether its 1,200 restaurants and countless bars will be forced to limit their hours, potentially devastating the city’s massive hospitality industry and its thousands of workers that serve a metro area of 1.2m residents and nearly 20m tourists annually.

At least two people in the city have died following the outbreak, with a bulk of the state’s 91 confirmed cases within city limits. The state’s disproportionate rate of infections rivals its much-larger neighbouring state Texas, which has four times as many people living in the state.

“The rate of infections is increasing much faster than other cities in the US,” said Jennifer Avegno, director of the New Orleans Health Department.

The number of Covid-19 cases in Louisiana more than doubled overnight on Saturday.

On Sunday, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell told reporters: “This is in fact a crisis. Make no mistake about that. ... We do not want to see the death toll escalate.”

The mayor said officials anticipate the number of cases increasing “every day and, as we see, within hours” as officials urged people within the famously laissez faire city to stay off the streets and avoid large gatherings. Businesses remain open, for now, though Mayor Cantrell said officials are “working to curtail the number of patrons”.

She has not out-ruled ”more aggressive measures” like pulling business permits in concert with alcohol licensing officials “if we’re not getting the responses we expect”.

The city rolled out a sweeping set of rules affecting bars and restaurants throughout the city on Sunday, including forcing restaurants to close by 9pm and reducing capacity by 50 per cent.

Last call — rarely invoked in the city — will be 11.15pm.

On Saturday night, the New Orleans Police Department broke up huge crowds on Bourbon Street and warned partiers to heed warnings to avoid crowds to limit the spread of the virus, which has killed at least 61 in the country and sickened more than 3,000 others.

Photos and video of the city’s undisturbed, bustling nightlife over the weekend as well as block parties celebrating St Patrick’s Day underscored the potential severity of a growing outbreak in the city.

With the city’s “festival season” nearing, officials postponed the week-long French Quarter Festival to the fall, while officials are eyeing what to do about the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the region’s two-week-long music and food festival that attracts half a million people to the city for the outdoor event, and countless others flock to nearby concerts and other events in its wake, giving the city a springtime economic boom.

Louisiana residents are used to bracing for seasonal hurricanes and tropical storms by stocking up on necessities, batteries and enough food in the event of outages and closures, but city officials were more stern on Sunday as they warned of imminent “turbulence” in the days and weeks ahead.

The city has entered into a pilot agreement with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, following Donald Trump‘s emergency declaration that frees up billions of dollars in relief funds to state and local governments. A date has not been determined to begin setting up those sites.

Dr Avegno said that while the city has the space to care for a potential surge of patients, it doesn’t have enough staff or adequate equipment.

She said officials are “working very hard with the state” to potentially draw from a pool of volunteer medical personnel.

Ms Cantrell said: “While we can meet that need right now, we’re very much focused on building our capacity ... We will need that.”