Louisiana’s Assistant State Health Officer Dr. Joe Kanter joined Newell for his recurring weekly segment Thursday morning to discuss the latest developments in the battle against COVID-19, preventative measures, and who can get a vaccine and how. This week, there is something to celebrate.
“Where do we stand today, Doc?” Newell began. “I understand positivity rates continue to drop and hospitalizations are dropping as well.”
“ We really have a lot of good news today,” Kanter agreed. “We have historic lows on a lot of measures. Louisiana’s percent positivity is down to 2.9%, and that's the lowest point it's been since the initial surge a year ago. The number of COVID patients hospitalized as inpatients throughout the state is actually below 450, and it hasn't been below 500 since our first spike a year ago. We have the lowest number of new cases in nursing home residents to date, and the lowest number of deaths in nursing home residents due to the good work we're doing getting vaccine out to that community. And we have now initiated the vaccine series in about 21% of the population and completed it in about 12% of the population. All of those are encouraging. I still have a little bit of pause because of the variants, and cases are going up in 14 states right now, including Alabama and Mississippi. But for the time being, with the exception of the Lake Charles area, the state is doing quite well, and the vaccine rollout is going well.”
“Where are we as it relates to the number of shots in arms?”
“We are at about 1 million in arms,” Kanter said. “We are just below a million people having initiated a series and the CDC actually has a little bit of a higher number than we're able to report for Louisiana because they have administrations that are given in federal assets, like the VA hospital and the Bureau of Prisons and corporate Department of Defense and we don't get that data. So it’s actually a little higher.”
“You guys have had your meeting this week to forecast what you're expected to receive relative to vaccines,” Newell continued. “Is that number improved or no?”
“It's exactly flat for this coming week,” Kanter said. “We're getting the same amount of Moderna, the same amount of Pfizer, the same tiny amount of Johnson & Johnson - that’s about 5,000 Johnson & Johnson, which really is nothing, but we're going to augment that this week. We were initially forced to put a whole bunch of vaccines in the long-term care program with Walgreens and CVS, not knowing exactly how much they would end up using. As extras have become apparent as that program gets closer to completion, we're able to sort of claw that allotment back into the state. So we're going to do that for about 14,700 doses this week, which will give us a little bit of a bump. What we've been told from the White House and from General Perna at Operation Warp Speed is that this coming week will be flat. The next week may be flat, maybe up a little bit. And then the week prior to that, once we get into the beginning of April, is when these should see substantial increases in volume. And I think that's what allowed President Biden to say he expects nationwide anyone to have access by May 1st.”
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.
