As if there aren’t enough things to juggle in Louisiana right now, the state reported 844 new COVID cases and 32 new deaths as Hurricane Laura roared ashore. To better understand how officials continue to battle the virus amid evacuations and rescue missions, Newell invited Louisiana Assistant State Health Officer Dr. Joe Kanter onto the show Thursday morning.
“This probably isn’t the way we wanted to buy a few days with schools going back, but it seems like that may be one benefit to all this,” Newell said.
“There were a handful of schools experiencing small clusters of cases, and a few days of closure will help that and allow them to double back on what they’re doing,” Kanter agreed. “They’ll be open soon enough. What’s making us nervous now is that testing for this week is really interrupted, to say the least. It’s like we’re flying blind. We were on a really good track with our COVID numbers, feeling good about what we had done, but you can only be confident when you have good visibility. With a week’s worth of testing lost, there’s some consternation that we don’t have good eyes on it. We’re going to have to work hard to get our testing back and continue the progress we had leading up to this.”“I’m not sure how to characterize this, but I’m getting frustrated, and I don’t even do what you do,” Newell continued. “It seems like the CDC and Director Robert Redfield are now retreating from their earlier guidance as it relates to testing for asymptomatic people. That news broke when I was talking to the Governor a few days ago, and nobody had figured out what they were saying, and unfortunately, it seems like they still haven’t!”“What a mess,” Kanter sighed. “Nobody knew what they were saying because they really snuck it in there. Normally, when the CDC has new guidance they want to roll out, it’s accompanied by a wealth of information providing explanations, scientific rationale, studies, and data to support it. That’s why the CDC has been such a well-respected institution because they back up their recommendations with evidence, and that’s why people look to them for guidance. With this, they have two changes - they dis-encouraged routine quarantine for travelers returning from affected areas, and they lessened the testing recommendations for anyone who had contact and may have been exposed. They did that without any fanfare, no supporting evidence, and no further communications about why they did that. It smells political, it’s not good, and I expect they’ll walk some of it back. It is frustrating.”
