The state health department is reporting 2,081 COVID hospitalizations today an increase of 82 from Wednesday. Governor John Bel Edwards said hospitalizations among children from the Omicron variant are also on the rise and he wanted to dispel any rumors that COVID is not impacting children.
“We’re looking at the latest week of complete data and the week of January 2nd. 92 children were admitted to the hospital with COVID in our state, that’s higher than we saw during the Delta surge,” said Edwards.
Edwards said some of those children admitted are between the ages of zero to four, which are not eligible to be vaccinated.
The state is also tracking COVID re-infections, Edwards said those cases are available on the Department of Health’s COVID Dashboard. LDH is also in the process of analyzing those cases and will soon share the percentage of reinfections among the unvaccinated.
“Yesterday we reported 2,384 new re-infections and 35,819 total reinfections since the start of the pandemic,” said Edwards.
According to the CDC, 60-percent of reinfections from September to December in the US are among the unvaccinated.
Edwards continues to remind the public of the importance of being fully vaccinated and boosted with the Omicron variant. He said statistics show that being inoculated is in your favor.
“If you’re vaccinated and boosted, you’re 10 times less likely to contract COVID in the first place, you’re 17 times less likely to end up in the hospital and you’re 20 times less likely to die,” said Edwards.
Edwards also encouraged indoor masking to decrease COVID transmission in a concerted effort not to overwhelm the health care delivery system. When asked about reinstating the mask mandate Edwards said the topic will be discussed with hospital leaders next week at their weekly meetings.
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