NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana reported 9,150 coronavirus infections Thursday, a jump of 42%, although both the outbreak’s cases and deaths remain concentrated in this city and an adjoining parish, according to the state Department of Health.
As of noon Thursday, the state’s death toll had moved to 310. Of that total, 63% of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 occurred in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish. The two parishes along the Mississippi River in the southeast corner of Louisiana accounted for 58% of cases.
The numbers show that on a per-capita basis, Louisiana, with a population of 4.6 million, remains an epicenter of the virus, which is ravaging the world since first infecting people in Wuhan, China, last year. By comparison, California, which has almost 10 times the population of the Pelican State, has attributed 200 deaths to the coronavirus.
The chief cause for the striking increase was a recent deluge of commercial lab test results, which have been taking longer to process than state lab tests, according to Gov. John Bel Edwards and health officials.
“While extremely upsetting, this increase in COVID-19 cases appears to be less a sign of new exponential growth and more a sign of a logjam from commercial labs,” Mr. Edwards said Thursday.
State officials have warned the health care infrastructure, like that in New York, is buckling under the surge. Makeshift hospital wards are planned in the New Orleans Convention Center and elsewhere to house patients who are recovering, thereby freeing space for more acute situations.
The number of those hospitalized in Louisiana rose to 1,639 Thursday, with 507 of them needing ventilators, the state health department said. That percentage has held steady at about one-third.
The concentration in New Orleans and the suffering in other parts of the state — the coronavirus has been recorded in 61 of the state’s 64 parishes — has been attributed partly to the city’s Mardi Gras celebration on Feb. 25, in which hundreds of thousands packed the French Quarter and other parts of the city for sustained partying.
• James Varney can be reached at jvarney@washingtontimes.com.
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