U.S. disaster relief organizations and agencies are racing to plan for hurricane season in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to NPR.
The pandemic is complicating plans for hurricane season in the Southeast region of the country, as the typical plans may clash with guidelines to prevent the deadly coronavirus from spreading.
Many shelters are managed by the American Red Cross under the supervision of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Red Cross plans to follow new guidelines based on the CDC's recommendations for social distancing, but this could reduce capacity at the shelters by as much as 60 percent, local emergency managers told NPR.
FEMA is looking into alternatives for people who may have to be evacuated from their homes due to hurricanes, including hotels with vacancies. But emergency managers are not sure how to incorporate hotels into their plans, and there are several unresolved questions, like who would get the hotel rooms.
Different states are taking different approaches with regard to hotels as alternate shelter sites, with Florida working to build a network of hotels, and Alabama planning not to incorporate hotels into its emergency hurricane season strategies at all.
Public health experts warn that people who are evacuated to shelters, instead of staying with family or booking their own hotel rooms, are more likely to have a severe case of COVID-19 if they contract the disease.
"Those are the same people who have less access to healthcare, less health insurance and are more likely to have unknown or uncontrolled comorbidities and may be at higher risk of death or complications from COVID," Emily Landon, MD, an infectious diseases specialist at University of Chicago Medicine, told NPR. "The last thing you want to do is take people from a dangerous situation involving a hurricane and move them into a dangerous situation involving COVID."
Read the full article here.
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