One visitor from Texas may have been responsible for the horrendous post-Mardi Gras COVID surge that devastated the New Orleans Metro Area according to a new study.
One of the study’s lead authors was Tulane Virologist Dr. Bob Garry. He said the virus arrived with that one person two weeks before Mardi Gras and sparked 800 cases by Ash Wednesday.
“Our data puts that date back somewhere near February 11th or so and we know that the first cases didn’t get diagnosed in New Orleans until March 9th so that is all very consistent with that,” said Garry.
Garry said that’s highly unusual because one, our infection resulted from domestic travel, and two most epicenters can trace their outbreaks back to several different infectious individuals.
“What we do know is that it did not come from Europe or Asia or some of the other places people speculated on, we got that single infection,” said Garry.
Garry said that one individual, and the COVID variant they carried, were likely responsible for up to 50,000 infections.
Scientists traced the genetic dots and found our variant had only been detected previously in Texas. Once it was introduced to the packed bars and streets of Mardi Gras it exploded. The study concludes the Mardi Gras outbreak did end up seeding outbreaks across the Gulf South, but due to travel restrictions did not result in major outbreaks outside the region.
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