Thread by @BlakePater

"We don't have much good news today," @LouisianaGov says kicking off his press conference. "There's nothing in the data today to suggest we are at or near the peak of this surge, which is very, very concerning." #lagov

Janet Mann, the winner of Louisiana's $1M vaccine lottery grand prize, is a retired elementary special education teacher from Bossier Parish. She snagged that big Shot At A Million check and got out of here! Full list of today's winners below theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/ne…

NEW VAX INCENTIVE: Louisiana will give away $100 Visa cards to the first 75K college students who get vaccinated at participating colleges and universities beginning Monday. This age group is driving a lot of the COVID infections in Louisiana, Edwards notes

"Students want an in-person college experience. They want as much normalcy as possible. To safely accomplish that we need more shots in arms," Edwards says.

At colleges, students will be given a deactivated Visa card upon vaccination, then they can register that card online to get it loaded with the $100

How safe are the COVID vaccines? Out of 2.1 million first doses in Louisiana, there have been just 8 confirmed reactions requiring hospitalization. There have been ZERO vaccine-related deaths in Louisiana. Meanwhile, just in today's report, 57 people died from COVID #lagov

Louisiana is at an all-time high for COVID hospitalizations at 2,907 - with a slope that's almost vertical. @LouisianaGov says "we're rapidly approaching the breaking point."
nola.com/news/coronavir…

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards says he's held a weekly call with the state's doctors since the COVID pandemic began: "I’ve never heard them express more concern, more alarm, more anxiety than they did this week because we are rapidly approaching the breaking point."

Over the last two weeks, at least 1.4% of Louisiana's entire population got infected with COVID-19, @JoeKanter says. An epidemiologist earlier this week told me that number could be 10x that

Deaths among those below the age of 40 in Louisiana have increased by 766% over the last month, @JoeKanter says

"When our hospitals get this busy they cannot provide the level and quality of care for any patient that we have become accustomed to. And that’s a serious thing to discuss," @JoeKanter says.

A Louisiana heart attack patient had to bypass 6 hospitals and take a 2-hour ambulance before a bed was found. Every minute delaying care more heart muscle dies, @JoeKanter says. "These are the type of scenarios that are happening all across the state"

Hospitals continue to beg for staffing resources. 58 facilities have reached out to the state. Last week, the Louisiana requested nearly 1000 nursing reinforcements from the feds #lagov theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/ne…

.@JoeKanter says if the surge doesn't peak in the next few weeks, it will "simply be catastrophic" for hospitals. What does that mean? "I can’t paint a great picture about what that might look like, because there’s really nothing to go on." Says triaging would come into play

"We’ve never been to a place where not one hospital but every hospital in the state simply can’t meet the demand of patients coming in," @JoeKanter says, adding that hospitals would do what they can to save the most lives possible

One month ago, there were 30 COVID patients at Ochsner Lafayette General's five acute care hospitals. Now, there's 162. "That's just one virus taking up a full one-third of our hospital beds right now," says Amanda Logue, the hospital's chief medical officer

It's not uncommon for there to be 7-9 hours of waiting in the ER at Ochsner's Lafayette facilities, Logue says. "It's essentially gridlock in a lot of situations when we go through surges like this," she says.

If this surge doesn't subside in the next few weeks, Logue said Ochsner might have to "make some really tough decisions." That might involve shutting down clinics and surgeries completely. "After that it's uncharted territory. We've never wanted to do it before."

Louisiana is in the thick of its worst COVID surge to-date and yet, its mitigation measures are as relaxed as ever (no capacity limits, etc). @LouisianaGov says the CDC has only offered guidance on masking indoors, and hopes that'll be enough to turn the tide in the next week

"We are rapidly reaching the point where we could have a major failure of the health care system," Louisiana's Gov. John Bel Edwards says. The only statewide pandemic restrictions at this point is a mask mandate.