Governor John Bel Edwards highlights a milestone in the state’s fight against COVID-19 as hospitalizations have dropped below 1000 for the first time since March 28th. Edwards says this is a significant improvement from a time when the state faced the possibility of running out of ventilators and hospital bed space.
“To put that into perspective, just over a month ago, we had 2,134 individuals in the hospital from COVID-19. Ventilator usage also continues to go down,” said Edwards.
As of Wednesday’s Department of Health report, there are 931 COVID-19 hospitalizations. 110 patients are on ventilators, down from a peak of 571 on April 4th.
Edwards credits citizens for their handling of spread mitigation efforts for being the reason behind the progress made over the last two months.
“Two months ago, we had the highest growth rate, the steepest growth rate in COVID-19 cases anywhere in the world according to Johns Hopkins data and we really have turned that around,” said Edwards.
The state has been in phase one of the economic reopening for less than a week and Edwards says more time is needed to gather data on how spread mitigation efforts are going before entering the conversation about moving into phase two.
“It takes seven to ten to fourteen days after you get more movement among the people, more contact. If there is going to be case spikes, it takes that long for them to show up and that’s why we need to be patient and get the data,” said Edwards.
Edwards anticipates being able to make an announcement about moving into the next phase on June 1.
Comments