WASHINGTON — Coast-to-coast storms. A spate of wildfires. Flooding in Hawaii. As the United States rushes into disaster season, federal officials now have an added crisis to worry about: How to stop tightly packed disaster-response shelters from becoming hot spots of coronavirus transmission.

The virus is forcing emergency managers to rethink long-held procedures for operating shelters like these in real time. That challenge comes as the nation’s crisis-response work force is already taxed by three years of brutal hurricanes, floods and wildfires, a trend that climate change promises to accelerate.

“All of these activities that we do during and after disasters are activities that require a lot of people to be in close proximity to each other,” said Samantha Montano, assistant professor of emergency management and disaster science at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. “And that is the exact opposite of what we need to do to keep people safe from Covid-19.”

“Any hazards that we’re concerned about on an annual basis, we need to be twice as concerned about them now,” she said.