Louisiana’s 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 and the vaccine rollout. This week, there is some good news but officials are wary of a fourth wave as new variants of the deadly virus continue to spread.
“Thanks as always for being with us, Doctor,” Newell began. “Where do we stand this week?”
“It's clear that we had a peak a couple of weeks ago and that we're coming down,” Kanter said. “Percent positivity as of yesterday is down to 8.3% and statewide hospitalization is below 1400 for the first time in two months. So it's encouraging that we're going down in the right trajectory... still awfully high, and the toll that COVID is taking has never been clearer. We surpassed 9,000 deaths yesterday. We added a thousand deaths just in the last three weeks. Deaths are lagging measure and I think that's going to continue a little bit. Right now looking forward, you've got these two big challenges. We've got to get the vaccine out and do that well. And we've got to prepare for the variants, which are going to cause an increase in cases. We have our challenges set out, and the game now is how to make gains before the variant gets prevalent here.”
“Where do we stand on vaccines?” Newell asked. “There's this ongoing debate over whether or not the federal government ought to be in control of all of this, as opposed to passing the vaccines down to the state. “Speaking for myself, I have more trust in you than I have for those up there. When I compare what we've done in the state of Louisiana, to what's going on in the debacle in New York.. we're hitting and clicking on all cylinders. I'd rather rely on my local officials than any federal official. That's just my opinion!”
“Thanks for having our back on that. I agree with you,” Kanter said. “I've been really encouraged by the conversation so far with the federal administration. The stance that they have taken is everything's on the table and they just asked the states, what do you need? And the range of things that they've made available are everything from very hands-on top-down approach, they'll come in and run a large testing site, and then they've offered a more hands off approach where they said, you know what, we'll just reimburse your expenses. And they've done something that I've never seen FEMA do. They announced that not only are they going to match a hundred percent cost share with the state, they're going to make that retroactive going back a year. And we surely had a ton of expenses earlier on. So I'm encouraged by that approach because there are some things we do very well in Louisiana. There are some things that we could use more resources on. There are some things that we would love to partner on. And I think that letting the states kind of take the lead and do what works for them is a good approach.”
“I mean, that approach is not something that's vastly different from the previous administration,” Newell said. “But obviously this administration is backfilling where they're seeing voids that are revealing themselves now that we're multiple weeks into the vaccine rollout.”
“I think is there's a lot more money on the table for the states right now,” Kanter continued.” There's no question about that. That said, at the end of the day, we're still in a situation where we just need more vaccine. We've done kind of pittances in terms of increases, a 16% increase a couple of weeks ago, 5% increase this week. We'll be able to draw a little bit more dosages down because of this federal retail pharmacy program, and that's encouraging, but it is a little bit frustrating to have the capacity here to give so much more vaccine than we have the vaccine available to do so.”
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.
Dr. Joe Kanter explains what's working and what's not
