Speaking during a weekly meeting with the media, New Orleans Communications Director Beau Tidwell talked about residents keeping safe during the Easter weekend.
Tidwell says the city is doing everything they can to get people vaccinated, but we're not out of the woods yet, so...
“With Easter coming up, just as we saw with Christmas, with Thanksgiving, with all the other holidays, we really want people to remain aware and remain vigilant,” Tidwell begins. “We saw spikes happen after other major holidays with family gatherings.”
New Orleans, and the state of Louisiana, are hopefully on the backside of the pandemic.
But recognizing that irresponsible gatherings without social distancing and other efforts to keep the spread of COVID from happening could cause a spike in infections.
Tidwell says the city doesn't have any special restrictions like street closures ready for the Easter weekend, but he did have this to say:
“The message is really we’re not back to normal yet,” He says matter-of-factly. “We’re not there yet, so while we’re not going to be doing street closures. For the Easter gathering, those gatherings tend to be family gatherings, or family and friends, or church gatherings.”
So Tidwell asks people who are planning on having a family gathering to remember to practice social distancing and other practices to avoid generating an infection spike.
The Director offered some kind cautionary words to people planning family gatherings for Easter 2021.
“As people are making their Easter plans we ask them to be cognizant that the virus is still out there, still taking lives and variants which could create a spike and cost us some of our forward progress.” Tidwell says. “So going into Easter we ask people to remain vigilant and as safe as possible.”
And Tidwell is also urging anyone and everyone to get a COVID vaccine shot. He says the faster we can reach herd immunity of 75-80-percent of the population vaccinated, the faster we can get back to normal.
