NEW ORLEANS (AP) - New Orleans will likely ease restrictions on gatherings and businesses more slowly than the rest of Louisiana as the fight against the new coronavirus continues, a city health official said Friday.
Gov. John Bel Edwards is expected to announce Monday whether Louisiana will further ease restrictions when current emergency orders expire June 5.
But New Orleans - where huge Mardi Gras crowds in late February are suspected of contributing to a deadly COVID-19 outbreak - will likely move more slowly than the state, city health department director Jennifer Avegno said.
“New Orleans has to be more careful,” Avegno said during a live-streamed news conference. “Because what happens regionally affects us more than it does a lot of other places. Not just regionally within Louisiana but regionally within the Gulf South.”
One concern she cited were large Memorial Day gatherings along the Gulf Coast in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi that might have involved New Orleans residents. She noted a photo of large gatherings on a northwest Florida beach.
“There is no social distancing. This kind of sight gives public health folks a whole lot of heartburn,” Avegno said. “I don’t know how many New Orleanians went to Pensacola Beach, Gulf Shores, Bay St. Louis, but I know it was more than a few.”
City officials want more time to collect and analyze data to determine the effect of New Orleans residents’ visits to such Memorial Day events before further loosening restrictions.
Prohibitions on dining in restaurants, church services and services at hair and nail salons were among the restrictions that ended last month in the city and the state. The next step - based on Phase 2 of White House guidelines - could mean reopening schools, restarting organized youth activities and, with limited capacity, reopening bars.
The state did not have its usual daily updated figures on testing and confirmed cases in Louisiana on Friday, citing technical problems. Figures released Thursday show 38,802 cases statewide, based on more than 354,000 tests. The state says 28,700 have recovered. The latest available figures put the number of confirmed cases in New Orleans at a little over 7,000. Neighboring Jefferson Parish had more than 7,400.
The number of deaths related to COVID-19 was updated to 2,661 Friday, up from 2,635 a day earlier. And hospitalizations - a key factor in the state’s decisions on whether to loosen restrictions - continued to fall, dropping to 714 from 761 a day earlier. More than 2,100 were hospitalized with COVID-19 in early April.
“We have fewer than 100 people on ventilators for the first time since March 23,” Edwards said at his Friday news conference. He recalled that in early April, authorities were afraid there would not be enough ventilators available for people who needed them. “That turned out not to be the case,” he said, crediting people who observed stay-at-home orders.
Edwards said the state has submitted a plan to federal authorities for conducting testing and “contact tracing” - identifying those who are infected and finding people they have been in close contact with - in exchange for up to $190 million in funding available to help with the effort.
The testing goals in the plan include making sure 4% of the state population and 2% of each parish’s population are tested monthly; and that the number of positive tests does not exceed 10%. He said testing falls short in only three parishes this month. And, while the state overall positive rate currently is 11%, the rate is on the decline, with the daily rate consistently below 10% in recent weeks.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up within weeks. For some, especially older adults and those with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness and be life-threatening.
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