According to a UL-Lafayette study, Louisiana has one of the fastest growth rates of confirmed cases of COVID-19. Dr. Gary Wagner, Acadiana Business Economist Endowed Chair at UL-Lafayette says he compared the state’s numbers for the first 13 days to other recorded numbers of other cities and nations first two weeks.
“So it’s not the fastest rate of growth of the last two weeks of anywhere in the world, but looking at once the initial case happened anywhere in the world how quickly did cases grow in their first thirteen days and Louisiana is the fastest growing in the world,” says Wagner.
Wagner, who does not specialize in healthcare, has a few theories on why Louisiana is seeing a large growth of cases compared to other areas.
“Could be that had, you know, clustering of people related to Mardi Gras that facilitated that spread. We certainly weren’t testing at an extremely high rate compared to other states,” says Wagner.
Wagner says he will continue to track to the statistics and share them with the Department of Health. At first, the cases were in the single digits, but then they started to double daily.
“Once you get to a threshold where you’re at a couple of thousand cases, that increase just happens so fast that you can’t get ahead of it,” says Wagner.
Story by Brooke Thorington.
Comments