BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said he will extend his COVID-19 emergency order for another month as the state eases from a surge of the highly contagious Omicron variant.
Edwards said he plans to sign a new public health emergency order on Tuesday, but it will not include mask mandates for the public or schools. The new order will continue for another 28 days and will expire on March 16.
The Louisiana Department of Health will give additional guidance for K-12 schools later this week.
“We are definitely on the downswing,” Edwards said. “We have made great progress as a state since Omicron peaked.”
The LDH reported just over 3,000 new cases and 41 deaths linked to COVID-19 over the weekend. That’s about half the number of new cases reported last Monday. The number of new cases and COVID-19 related hospitalizations has decreased significantly since reaching peaks in mid-January.
“Things are improving, that is the bottom line,” Edwards said. “We still have a ways to go.”
As of Sunday, there were 1,135 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Louisiana. Of those patients, 71 percent were not fully vaccinated against the virus.
“The number of hospitalizations remains about four times what they were before the Omicron surge started,” Edwards said.
The governor said the COVID-19 hospitalizations was one factor he used to decide whether to extend the health emergency. He said it is possible that the the emergency will finally expire after the latest extension ends.
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