Louisiana COVID-19
Despite teachers’ COVID sickout, East Baton Rouge schools stay in-person
East Baton Rouge Parish public schools will continue in-person learning despite a recent surge in COVID-19 cases and more than 700 teachers calling out sick in protest. Superintendent Sito Narcisse said in a statement to the Louisiana Illuminator that the school system’s current COVID-19 mitigation measures – including mandatory masking, weekly mandatory staff testing, deep […]
Some Louisiana college campuses are keeping their mask mandates; others may soon adopt mandates
In response to the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic, LSU’s Health and Medical Advisory Committee has announced a list of “science-based recommendations” including the continuation of a mask mandate and the requirement of a negative COVID-19 test before arriving on campus. The committee is recommending that the administration adopt those measures for all LSU campuses. LSU […]
More than 10,000 Louisianians have now died of COVID-19
Louisiana officials were celebrating the news last week that the number of Louisianians hospitalized with COVID-19 in had dipped to the lowest level since near the beginning of the devastating worldwide pandemic. To illustrate how much things had changed, an administrator for LCMC Health tweeted Wednesday that Touro Infirmary in New Orleans was “COVID free […]
New Orleans and the country remember those lost to COVID-19
Of the more than 400,000 people who’ve died of COVID-19 in the United States and more than 8,300 who’ve died in Louisiana, more than 700 have died in New Orleans. City officials commemorated the city’s deaths Tuesday as President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris commemorated the country’s immense loss on the eve of […]
COVID-19 in Louisiana: as bad as it’s been and getting worse
“There’s never been more COVID in Louisiana than there is now,” the state’s top public health officer said at a press conference Tuesday. The risk of community spread and transmission has never been higher than it is now, Joe Kanter, the interim head of the Office of Public Health said, and, he said even higher […]
More COVID-19 cases, more restrictions for Louisiana
More than two months after Louisiana’s relatively low COVID-19 numbers gave Gov. John Bel Edwards a reason to move to Phase 3 of the state’s reopening plan, the governor announced Tuesday that he is returning the state to a “revised Phase Two.” That means lower capacities in restaurants, gyms and “nonessential” retail establishments and sports […]
Nursing home-visitation bill addresses a real problem in a problematic way
Hours before my mother died I spoonfed her vanilla ice cream. Sprinkled into the dessert was a vitamin she’d been refusing to take. But I pleaded with her. I asked her to please take it — if only for me — and though she had stopped opening her mouth to talk, she eventually opened up […]
Louisiana Republicans want power during health emergencies, but haven’t agreed on how much
The Louisiana Legislature’s Republican leadership came into their month-long special session this week in part to wrestle more control over the COVID-19 health crisis from the Democratic governor. But there isn’t consensus among them over how much of that power they actually want. Senate President Page Cortez, R-Lafayette, and House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, R-Gonzales, presented […]
COVID-19 hits Black America hard, but HBCU chiefs find vaccine trial is hard to sell
COVID-19 is known to have infected one of every 36 Black New Orleanians during the pandemic. There’s no way of knowing how many New Orleanians of any race have been infected, but those 6,601 confirmed cases that have been counted among Black people are 2.5 times more than the 2,594 cases that have been counted […]
DEBERRY: America promised to learn lessons from Hurricane Katrina, but the events of 2020 say it didn’t
Not long after four bouncers from Razoo Bar & Grill pinned 26-year-old Levon Jones to the ground until he was dead, trumpeter Hannibal Lokumbe told an MLK Day crowd at St. Louis Cathedral that because he breathes into a horn for a living, he couldn’t imagine a more horrible death than the Black college student […]
ACLU sues Louisiana over its process regarding early release of prisoners
The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana says the state’s government is illegally withholding information about its process regarding the early release of prisoners during the coronavirus pandemic. The advocacy organization is suing Louisiana’s Department of Corrections for documents related to a review panel that decided which inmates could end their sentences early because of […]
COVID-19 cases are straining the state’s healthcare capacity, Gov. Edwards warns
As the state of Louisiana reached a grim milestone of more than 100,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, Gov. John Bel Edwards and officials from the two biggest hospitals in Acadiana said Thursday that the surging number of cases, including among health-care workers, is putting Louisiana at risk of running out of staff to treat incoming […]