By Associated Press - Monday, October 5, 2020

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Gov. John Bel Edwards said Monday that alcohol sales can resume at Louisiana sporting events this weekend in parishes that have reached low rates of new coronavirus cases and are allowed to reopen bars.

The Democratic governor said these changes to his coronavirus restrictions will be included in the latest emergency order he intends to release later this week. His current set of rules expires Friday, and Edwards hasn’t said if he’ll loosen up any other limits.

Edwards said in a statement that alcohol sales at stadiums, arenas and other sports complexes “will be limited to fans buying alcohol and returning to their seats to drink it and will require event managers to continue with their strong COVID mitigation measures.”

Shortly after Edwards made his announcement, LSU said alcohol sales will return to Tiger Stadium for Saturday’s football game.

To qualify, sports events must be in parishes that have seen 5% of their coronavirus tests or less return positive in the last two weeks, an indication that the virus isn’t spreading widely in the parish. The parish must also have agreed to reopen bars to onsite drinking. Twenty of Louisiana’s 64 parishes currently meet those criteria, according to the governor’s office.

Louisiana’s state health department has reported more than 168,000 coronavirus cases and at least 5,396 virus-related deaths since the pandemic began.

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Follow AP coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.

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