Governor John Bel Edwards says there are positive signs that Louisiana has plateaued in the latest COVID-19-surge but the state percent positivity rate remains over 10-percent. The state health department reported 1,937 new cases on Friday and 41 more deaths. Edwards says the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has fallen below 18-hundred, but…
“I will tell you that we remain with too many people with COVID-19 in the hospital, it continues to stress our healthcare delivery system,” said Edwards.
The total number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths is just shy of eight-thousand and the state will likely surpass that grim milestone this weekend. Edwards says while there’s a decline in the total of new cases reported each day, but the lagging indicator is deaths.
“That’s why we’ve reported over 100 deaths over two days, 159 deaths over three days, just unacceptably high,” said Edwards.
The state health department also reports that 314-thousand vaccine doses have been administered and 41-thousand individuals have received both dosages. State Health Officer Doctor Joe Kanter says the state will receive another 58-thousand vaccines next week, the same as this week and they expect the allocation to remain flat for the next four to five weeks.
“That means that we can’t do the very large scale events that we’ve been prepping for so long, once supply increases and certainly once the Johnson and Johnson or Astrazeneca vaccines get authorized and become available to us, we are looking forward to do that,” said Kanter.
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