COVID in Louisiana shows consequences of Delta variant, low vaccination rate

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 4 (Reuters) – Low vaccination rates and the more infectious Delta variant converge to create a new COVID-19 crisis for Louisiana as the United States and the world grapple with the latest pandemic stage.

Thomas Madden has said his 13-year-old son Gabriel is fighting back. Madden took Gabriel to the Lakeside Shopping Center in a New Orleans suburb this week for a vaccine at a site run by Ochsner Health System, Louisiana’s largest nonprofit provider.

“This Delta variant freaked my wife out,” Madden said as he waited with Gabriel in the indoor mall just after receiving his shot. “But that was really up to him – he wanted to get it because he was getting a little nervous about starting school soon.”

Many people wore masks at the Lakeside Shopping Center. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that Americans start wearing masks indoors in areas of high transmission, which now include most of the country. The CDC cited the rapid spread of the Delta variant, which the agency said has led to the likely transmission of COVID-19 from fully vaccinated people.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards on Monday ordered residents to hide inside again. State officials on Wednesday said they set a record for hospitalized COVID patients at 2,247 people.

Coronavirus cases around the world topped 200 million on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally. It took more than a year for COVID-19 cases to reach 100 million, while the next 100 million were reported in just over six months, according to the Reuters tally. The United States accounts for one in seven infections, and outbreaks occur in Louisiana and other states with low vaccination rates.

Louisiana’s vaccination rate ranked it 47th among U.S. states for the first doses administered, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county data. According to the most recent data, 43% of Louisianans had received their first dose of the vaccine and only 37.1% were fully immunized. The respective figures for the United States as a whole were 57.9% and 49.7%. (Graph on US cases and vaccinations)

(Reuters Global Vaccination Tracker)

Louisiana’s top medical official Dr Joseph Kanter said the state, which was at the epicenter of an outbreak when the pandemic began, was “in the worst place we have ever been during the pandemic “.

Staffing and hospital capacity are currently the most daunting challenges in Louisiana, Kanter said. Even before the Delta variant boomed, more than 6,000 nursing positions were open statewide.

DEMORALIZED AND EXHAUSTED

Earlier in the pandemic, state officials could count on federal help or nurses from other states. Now the understaffing is just far too great for the small available federal teams that have arrived to make a huge impact. And Delta is causing simultaneous surges across the country, consuming nursing resources.

“None of us imagined it could get this bad,” said Ecoee Rooney, president of the Louisiana State Nurses Association.

Rooney said nurses are beyond burnout and, like those across the country, is deeply demoralized to face what they know is a preventable increase.

“We have COVID patients who don’t even believe they have COVID because they refuse to believe it exists,” Rooney said. “We feel the brunt of the frustration and anxiety about what our future will look like if people don’t get vaccinated and wear masks.”

VACCINATION RATES VARY

Louisiana National Guard sergeant Kevin Alexander helps manage a vaccination and screening site in Louis Armstrong Park in New Orleans.

“It was ups and downs. In the last two weeks we have performed 500 tests per day, compared to 250 per day a few weeks earlier, ”said Alexander.

Late Tuesday afternoon, he stood guard in a deserted parking lot where vaccinations and tests take place. On Wednesday morning, he also saw little traffic.

Immunization rates vary county by county and state by state across the United States. Kaytlyn Byers, 32, was visiting New Orleans this week from Pennsylvania, where 65.9% of the population had received at least one dose of the vaccine and 52.6% were fully immunized.

Byers, who had been vaccinated months ago, said she didn’t realize Louisiana was a Delta hotspot.

“We were shocked that they reinstated a mask warrant and that it went into effect today,” Byers said as she stood on Bourbon Street with a drink in her hand. “We were sure the rules here in the South would be more lax than back home in Pennsylvania.”

The festivities were in full swing around her Tuesday night on the famous Big Easy Street, which eternally smacks of yesterday’s party baked under today’s scorching sun.

Byers said she knows people who have been vaccinated and who still have a breakthrough COVID infection. She said she planned to be careful and mainly stay outside for the remainder of her visit.

Reporting by Brad Brooks in New Orleans Additional reporting by Anurag Maan in Bengaluru Editing by Donna Bryson and Matthew Lewis

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