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Coronavirus In Louisiana: What You Need To Know Today

The French Market in New Orleans sits quiet and empty admidst government-ordered shutdowns in response to the spread of coronavirus.
Ashley Dean
/
WWNO
The French Market in New Orleans sits quiet and empty admidst government-ordered shutdowns in response to the spread of coronavirus.

The latest on the spread of coronavirus in New Orleans and across Louisiana today, April 2.

Want to take a breather and catch up later? Sign up for our New Orleans Public Radio newsletter and we'll send you a news roundup at the end of each week.

Or, if you're in Baton Rouge, sign up for WRKF's weekly newsletter.

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4 p.m.

In his daily press briefing, Gov. John Bel Edwards said seeing more than 2,700 new coronavirus cases was “jarring” and attributed the spike to a flood of test results from commercial labs that have struggled to keep up with demand.

The Louisiana Department of Health, which has a faster turnaround time, has prioritized testing patients who have already been hospitalized with severe COVID-19 symptoms. Edwards said most of the tests processed by the commercial labs originated at community testing sites, and reasoned that those individuals experienced relatively mild symptoms and were able to safely self-isolate at home.

The spike in new confirmed cases did not have a significant effect on modeling the LDH has done to anticipate when the state’s health care capacity might be overwhelmed, Edwards said. Those models are based on hospitalization rates and the number of patients who require ventilators.

The most recent models predict that the New Orleans area will run out of ventilators by April 7 and run out of beds by April 12.

According to a national model, Edwards said, COVID-19 will peak in Louisiana in about eight days.

He said the state is not tracking the number of individuals who have recovered from COVID-19, but, anecdotally, he said some people have. Instead, the state is devoting all of it’s limited epidemiological resources to tracking the spread.

Edwards did not say where the state would “surge” health care capacity next. He said the state is not likely to stand up a temporary health care facility in each of the LDH’s nine administrative regions. We are more likely to see temporary facilities pop up in the state’s population centers. Edwards mentioned Baton Rouge and Lafayette.

Compliance is still a problem. Edwards said the state has utilized location data from phone companies to determine which cities’ residents were staying put. He said he was pleased with the results in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Bossier, but other areas of the state need to do better.

Thursday’s test results included the first positive for Caldwell Parish, which means only three of the state’s 64 parishes have no confirmed cases. Those are Cameron, Tensas and West Carroll.

Edwards took a moment to remember Ellis Marsalis, who died yesterday at age 85.

“Louisiana lost a legend yesterday,” Edwards said. “He was the proud patriarch of one of the most prominent jazz families in New Orleans… He was a mentor to countless jazz legends and left an indelible mark on New Orleans.”

His family says that his cause of death was complications of COVID-19.

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12:50 p.m.

Unemployment claims continue to increase across the country.

Last week, 6.6 million people filed for unemployment benefits in the United States, according to data released today from the U.S. Department of Labor. There were 3.3 million claims the week prior (the week ending on March 21).

In Louisiana, there were 97,830 claims filed last week. The previous week (ending March 21) there were 72,438 claims filed in the state. The week ending March 14 saw 14,143 claims filed.

What does that mean in dollars and cents?

During a press conference yesterday, Gov. John Bel Edwards said the state typically spends about $2.5 million per week on unemployment payments. In just three days this week, between Monday and Wednesday, Louisiana spent about $20 million.

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Noon

The latests report from the Louisiana Department of Health shows another 37 people have died of COVID-19 across Louisiana, 10 of them in New Orleans.

It also shows a jump of 2,726 in total number of cases — a 42 percent increase from yesterday. A total of 9,150 people have tested positive for coronavirus in Louisiana. Of those, 3,148 are in New Orleans. The 24-hour increase within Orleans Parish is 878 cases.

The increase is due in part to a big influx of previously backlogged tests, some from more than a week ago, according to the New Orleans Health Department.

The state lab has completed 3,901 tests, while commercial labs have completed 47,185 tests. That's a total of 5,107 tests completed since yesterday.

There are 1,639 people hospitalized with COVID-19 — about a 9 percent increase from Wednesday. There are 507 people on ventilators, up from 490 Wednesday.

There are known COVID-19 cases in all but three Louisiana parishes, though Gov. John Bel Edwards has repeatedly said it's safe to assume it's in all parishes.

Jefferson Parish still has the second-highest number of cases: 2,178. Seventy-three people have died there. In St. Tammany, 399 people have tested positive and nine have died. In Caddo, we know 336 people have the virus and 10 are dead. In East Baton Rouge, it's 325 and 11.

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Credit Bart Everson / Flickr
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Flickr

11:45 a.m.

Louisiana officials are facing rising scrutiny as COVID-19 spreads through jails and prisons in the state, facilities that critics argue are perfect breeding grounds for the highly contagious and deadly virus.

Two more people held at the federal prison in Oakdale, Louisiana died from COVID-19 this week, bringing the total inmates killed there to three—the first coronavirus deaths of any federal inmates in the nation.

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This week, Gov. John Bel Edwards announced that an employee of the state department of corrections has died from COVID-19, but gave no details about where that person worked. The Department of Public Safety and Corrections has reported that five inmates and 14 staff have tested positive across state prisons.

But Wendy Matherne has heard the number of COVID-19 cases among prisoners is far greater than official statistics indicate. Matherne’s adult son is incarcerated at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, where two staff have tested positive according to the state. But Matherne says her son and others at the prison told her the virus is already among inmates.

“They also believe that some of the residents, community members is what we refer to them as, have tested positive,” said Matherne, who’s also an advocate with Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children.

Read more

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9 a.m.

Ellis Marsalis, jazz pianist, educator, and patriarch of the Marsalis family, has died at the age of 85.

His death was announced in tweets from New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and Jazz at Lincoln Center, where his son Wynton is managing and artistic director.

He reportedly went into the hospital over the weekend with symptoms of pneumonia. The New York Times reports that his son Branford says the cause of death was complications from COVID-19.

Read more

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Copyright 2021 WWNO - New Orleans Public Radio. To see more, visit .

Ashley Dean is the digital news editor for New Orleans Public Radio. Before coming to New Orleans, she was the editor of Denverite, a digital news startup now under the Colorado Public Radio umbrella. Prior to that she was a copy editor and features writer at the Denver Post, and before that, a music reporter for the Colorado Daily. She graduated from Columbia University with a master's degree in journalism and from Northeastern University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.
Travis Lux
Travis is WWNO's coastal reporter.
Paul Braun was WRKF's Capitol Access reporter, from 2019 through 2023.