From Katrina to COVID-19: Hard-Learned Lessons and Resilience

During March and early April 2020, Louisiana experienced a surge in the number of cases and deaths from COVID-19—and New Orleans quickly became an epicenter for the pandemic. With Carnival season came 1.4 million visitors toNewOrleans, andwith them came COVID-19. Unfortunately, the Mardi Gras celebrations were some of the most populous events in the United States at the very time the virus was circulating and before the spread had been widely understood or acknowledged. Almost two weeks to the day after our Fat Tuesday celebration, Louisiana identified the first case of COVID-19, and the state quickly began to realize that our celebration of life would leave a trail of thousands of deaths in its wake. The federal government mismanaged public health surveillance efforts. The lack of widespread testing and contact tracing and the poor communication in the early days of the pandemic were catalysts for exponential viral spread. Although many would exclusively blame national leadership, our failures are also owing to chronic underfunding and poor engineering of national public health systems combined with a highly infectious virus that can spread even from people without symptoms. Louisiana is not new to bad luck, perfect storms, tragedy, or poor engineering. We are a resilient people. Our unique culture and celebrations unite us, and our tragedies level and teach us. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the state developed some of the most robust public health data collection systems and disaster preparedness infrastructures in the nation. While I was the secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH), I led disaster recovery and preparedness efforts and witnessed these systems in action. The lessons learned from our experiences with natural disasters can serve as a roadmap to other states to navigate back to normalcy.