Louisiana may be turning the corner on the coronavirus surge that began in late June. Cases appear to be dropping, and hospitals are seeing a decline in COVID-19 patients.
“It is too early to tell if Louisiana seems to be past the most recent surge of COVID, but there are several encouraging signs,” said Steven Procopio, policy director at the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana. “New cases and hospitalizations have been declining for at least two weeks.”
The seven-day average of new cases appears to have peaked at 2,602 on July 27, according to the COVID Tracking Project. On Tuesday, that had fallen to 1,238.
“I would like to hope that Louisiana [is past the peak], but I don’t feel completely comfortable saying that,” said Susan Hassig, an epidemiology professor at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. “It’s encouraging that the positivity rate is not rising even though the number of tests is declining. That may mean that we are plateauing.”
The positivity rate, the percentage of positive cases found among new tests, has remained above 10% since late June, according to the Louisiana Department of Health. It has declined modestly from about 13% in late July to 10.3% on Friday. The World Health Organization advises governments not to reopen their economies until the positivity rate has been at 5% or less for two weeks.
Louisiana does not report new tests on most Saturdays. Hassig said that gives staff in charge of collecting the data a breather.
This is the second coronavirus surge that Louisiana has experienced, the first coming in March. The first was blamed heavily on the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans in late February. Indeed, much of the surge was concentrated in the New Orleans metropolitan area. As cases rose, Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, imposed a stay-at-home order.
On May 15, Edwards let the order expire and allowed most businesses to reopen, including restaurants and bars. As cases surged again, Baton Rouge’s mayor, Sharon Weston Broome, ordered businesses on July 1 to require masks to be worn inside their establishments. On July 11, Edwards issued a statewide mask mandate and closed bars. In the second surge, rural areas have experienced more cases.
“I think you’ll see that the number of cases went down after our governor implemented the statewide mask mandate,” Susanne Straif-Bourgeois, a professor of epidemiology at the LSU Health Sciences Center.
Hassig suggests that the statewide mandate was only partially responsible.
“Around the same time, places like Home Depot and Walmart also came out with corporate mask mandates,” she said.
Hospitals are also seeing a drop in COVID-19 patients.
“By the third week of July, we saw about 70 new COVID admissions on a daily basis,” said Dr. Jeffrey Elder, director of Emergency Management at LCMC Health. “But then we plateaued, and in the last week, we’ve seen those numbers come down, and we are just over 50 daily cases.”
COVID-19 hospitalizations in Louisiana last rose on July 31, when they increased to 1,546, up 22 from the previous day. That number has fallen every day since Aug. 1 to 1,335 on Tuesday. The high of 1,600 was reached on July 27, according to the COVID tracking project.
“We were averaging 75 COVID-19 patients a day in July,” said Brian Crawford, chief administrative officer at Willis-Knighton Health System. “We’ve begun to trend down since Aug. 5, and we are at 63 patients today.”
But he added that they are not out of the woods.
“We are bracing for the upcoming flu season,” he stated. “My staff is tired, and right now, I’ve got 30 nurses out with COVID.”
Some also worry that the upcoming school year could cause another spike in cases.
“Cases are going down right now, but schools are starting up, most of them teaching via a hybrid method,” said Straif-Bourgeois. “So it will be very interesting to see if the number of outbreaks associated with schools and higher education will increase because of the increased exposure.”
