People who want to enter New Orleans bars, restaurants, music halls — or any other inside venue — will soon have to show proof of vaccination against the coronavirus or a recent negative test, according to new rules announced Thursday by the mayor amid a surge in virus cases.
Louisiana has become a hot spot for the fourth surge in the pandemic, driven by both low vaccination rates across the state and the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. While New Orleans’ residents are getting vaccinated at slightly higher rates than the U.S. as a whole, the vaccination rate for the entire state is one of the worst in the country.
“Look for your vaccination card and be prepared to show it,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell said at an afternoon news conference. She said the requirement begins Monday, although there will be a one-week grace period before the city begins aggressive enforcement.
Cantrell stressed that she is not imposing capacity limits on businesses or contemplating a shutdown similar to the one that devastated businesses in 2020. “Unlike this time last year, we have a tool that we did not have,” she said, referring to vaccines.
Venues falling under the new rule include the Superdome, where a new NFL season begins soon.
On July 30, Cantrell implemented a mandate requiring that people wear masks indoors, and Gov. John Bel Edwards later put one in place across the state. State, city and hospital officials have repeatedly sounded the alarm about the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19, stressing that nearly all of those in the hospital are not vaccinated. Cantrell said Thursday that most of the people hospitalized in New Orleans with COVID-19 are from outside the city.
Jennifer Avegno, the city’s top health official, implored people not to create fake vaccination cards, noting that the FBI has already arrested people who did so. Avegno, an emergency room doctor who often wears scrubs when she speaks at news conferences, spoke emotionally when asked about whether the measures announced Thursday are drastic.
“What’s drastic is where we are right now,” she said. “What’s drastic is that a patient who has a heart attack has to travel two hours to find a hospital. … What’s drastic is a 2-week-old hospitalized or a 12-year-old who could have been vaccinated on a ventilator,” she said. “Having a piece of paper, or having something on your phone … That’s not drastic.”
Many restaurants, bars, and coffee shops in New Orleans have already put in place their own requirement that patrons either show proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test taken within 72 hours. And the city is already requiring that workers and contractors get vaccinated.
Other U.S. cities are taking similar steps to curb the nation’s fourth coronavirus surge.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced Thursday that the city will require proof of full vaccination against coronavirus for indoor sites, including restaurants, bars, and gyms. New York’s mayor last week said the city will require proof of at least one shot for indoor activities.
About 60% of New Orleans’ population has had at least one dose of the vaccine, while 53% have been fully vaccinated. For the state as a whole, the rates are 38% and 45%, respectively.
Will one dose of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine protect me?
Yes, but not nearly as much as if you had both doses. Experts recommend getting fully vaccinated, especially with the emergence of worrisome coronavirus mutations such as the delta variant first identified in India.
The COVID-19 vaccines rolling out globally were developed to target the original version of the virus detected in late 2019. While they seem to work against newer versions, there’s a concern the shots eventually might lose their effectiveness if variants evolve enough.
With the delta variant, a study by British researchers found people were well protected when they got both doses of either the AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines. But with only one dose, protection was significantly reduced.
To stem the spread of the delta variant in the United Kingdom, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently delayed the lifting of remaining restrictions to get more people the full two doses.
Health officials are also concerned about the dozens of countries that still don’t have enough supply secured to distribute second doses within the recommended time frame.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said vaccinations with only one dose won’t be enough to stop outbreaks fueled by new variants and that people should maintain social distancing and other measures until more of the population is fully vaccinated.
The second dose of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine is critical because it’s what “really gives a boost to the immune system so that the antibody response is very strong,” says Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, WHO’s chief scientist.
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Confronted with a rapid surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, South Africa has returned to tighter restrictions on public gatherings and liquor sales, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced Tuesday night.
The new infections threaten the health systems in several parts of the country, said Ramaphosa in a nationally televised address.
Hospital admissions due to COVID-19 have increased by 59% over the past two weeks, according to Ramaphosa. South Africa’s 7-day rolling average of daily new cases has nearly doubled over the past two weeks from 6.69 new cases per 100,000 people on May 31 to 12.71 new cases per 100,000 people on June 14, according to Johns Hopkins University.
“Our priority now is to make sure there are enough hospital beds, enough health workers, enough ventilators, and enough oxygen to give the best possible care to every person who needs it,” said Ramaphosa.
“The massive surge in new infections means that we must once again tighten restrictions on the movement of persons and gatherings,” he said.
The nightly curfew has been extended by an hour from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. while religious gatherings indoors are now limited to 50 people. The number of people allowed to gather for social events has been limited to 50 people for indoor events and 100 people for outdoor events.
The retail sale of alcohol will only be permitted between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. from Monday through Thursday.
South Africa has been the country hardest hit by the pandemic in the entire continent, with a cumulative total of more than 1.7 million infections, including 57,000 deaths, accounting for nearly 40% of Africa’s total confirmed cases.
The new restrictions come as South Africa also battles to sustain a vaccination drive that has faced delays from global vaccines shortages and this week the news that it must discard 2 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to factory contamination in the United States.
Johnson & Johnson had promised to deliver 2 million of its single-shot doses by the end of June, but that is now viewed as in jeopardy because of the recent ruling by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that a large amount of J&J; vaccines were contaminated by a problem at a factory producing a component of the vaccine. About 480,000 of South Africa’s health care workers have been vaccinated with J&J; doses.
Doses of the Pfizer vaccine are being used to inoculate people aged 60 and over. About 1.4 million people have received their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. According to Ramaphosa, South Africa is expecting to receive 3.1 million Pfizer doses by the end of June.
Gov. Gavin Newsom doled out $1.5 million each to 10 vaccinated winners at Universal Studios on Tuesday to mark the end of the state’s coronavirus restrictions.
The $15 million total was the final part of Newsom’s $116.5 million so-called “Vax for the Win” program, an effort to encourage residents to get vaccinated and hasten California’s recovery in the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed 3.8 million globally and 600,000 nationwide.
Tuesday, hailed as California’s reopening, meant the end of many coronavirus-related restrictions — such as masks, social distancing and capacity limits in most settings. Universal Studios encouraged guests to be masked and vaccinated but did not require it.
Newsom and Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s health secretary, were among those who did not wear masks during the vaccine lottery ceremony in front of the massive rotating Universal Studios globe, a Southern California tourism landmark.
Newsom, a Democrat, faces an expected recall election and his critics have called the taxpayer-money giveaways a publicity stunt. Vaccine incentives nationwide have ranged from beer to season tickets to vacations.
Ghaly said the state does not have specific data benchmarks that would prompt a return to restrictions and that local officials are expected to monitor their cases numbers and vaccination rates in the coming months.
“There is not a trigger,” he said.
More than 3.6 million people have tested positive for the virus in California and over 62,000 state residents died — figures that are higher than anywhere else in the country, though the nation’s most populous state had a lower per capita death rate than most others.
Now, California has one of the lowest rates of infection in the country — below 1%, and more than 70% of adults have received at least one vaccine dose.
Still, Newsom said state officials will continue to urge people to get vaccines for themselves and their children. On Tuesday, the state reported that 977 people with confirmed COVID cases were hospitalized — including 251 in intensive care units.
“This is not a day where we announce ‘mission accomplished,’ ” he said.
Newsom was accompanied at Universal by some of the studio’s famous characters like the minions from the “Despicable Me” franchise and Optimus Prime from the “Transformers,” as well as “Access Hollywood” host Scott Evans and Helen Cordova. Cordova is the Los Angeles nurse who was the state’s first person to receive a vaccine in mid-December as the holiday virus surge raged in hospitals across California.
“It was definitely one of the hardest points of my career,” Cordova said. “We saw way more death than we’d ever like to see.”
The trio pulled balls with numbers on them, in the style of game show hosts handing out huge checks, to represent the 10 winners throughout the state.
The names of the winners — among 22 million people who had to have received at least one dose; more than 40 million doses in total have been administered — were not made public.
A growing number of mass shootings in the U.S. have led providers to focus on the mental health of their caregivers and ways to be better prepared for victims of violence.
