NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans Health Department Director Dr. Jennifer Avegno took questions at a news conference on Tuesday where she announced the return of the citywide mask mandate.
Here are some of the topics Avegotouched on.
Comparing Mardi Gras 2020, widely believed to be a super spreader for COVID, with Mardi Gras plans for 2022.
Avegno: I think it’s easy to draw comparisons to two years ago although we have a lot more knowledge and tools. We have a highly-vaccinated city. We have a vaccine mandate. We will have a mask mandate and we have testing. We had none of those things (in 2020). It’s my job to worry about the health of the city, so I Feel like we need to position ourselves to be as healthy as possible.
On kids, COVID and parades.
Avegno: Children’s Hospital right now, as hospitalizations climb. The kids who are hospitalized there are unvaccinated. Some because they are too young to be vaccinated and we have a responsibility to surround them with protection. Some because they are old enough, but they haven’t chosen to be vaccinated. This is a serious disease. More serious, in many ways than many of the immunizations we get for our children on a regular basis.
It’s also incredibly safe. We have not had a pediatric death from the vaccine. There have been some – rare – side effects, but they have been transitory and we’re talking about millions and millions and millions of children.
Why now for the mask mandate and not earlier?
Avegno: It’s not perfect timing. It’s something we’ve been looking at for a while. We knew the holidays would be sort of a weird time and we wanted to really make sure we were providing a robust response with providing all of the tests and giving away masks. It shouldn’t take a mandate to do this. Those of us in public health who have taken these steps – mandate, requirements, we don’t like doing those indiscriminately. We’ve been up here since early December saying “you’ve got to wear a mask”… for better or worse, we hope the message has been getting across.
There’s always a hope that this would be a statewide mandate, because we know that, it’s truly helped Orleans when we’ve had stricter measures, the proof is absolutely there. It’s so much easier to get by and implement when it is statewide. At least eight states now have mask mandates. I’m not trying to throw the blame on the state, but there’s always that hope that could we engage other areas that see the importance of this and do it all together.
Are people in the hospital from COVID or are they there for another reason and then test positive for COVID?
It’s both. It is more… the good news is that both pediatric and adult, we are not seeing ICU utilization as we did in the early days. A lot of it is thanks to our health care community because they’ve figured out how to do a lot of this without having to put people on ventilators.
My understanding of the pediatric hospitalization is that there is definitely some, who come in for whatever, appendicitis, a broken leg, and have a positive COVID test. We’re seeing that in the adult hospitals as well. But, a large number of them are coming in for complications with COVID. They’re not in the ICU, they’re on the floor, but they’re still hospitalized and that’s still terrifying for a parent.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter why you’re in a bed. If you’re taking up a bed, that’s a bed that somebody sitting in a waiting room can’t access. So whether your primary need is COVID, or the fact that you also have COVID and you need extra mitigation while you’re in the hospital for your car accident, a bed Is a bed.
What do you say to people who say Omicron is now worse than a cold?
Avegno: I can’t remember the last time a cold shut down the American health care system and that’s what we’re seeing. So, for you, it might be a cold, but it takes you out of work. It takes 30 percent of people testing positive out of work, which means our nurses are out of work, which means your elective surgery can’t get done. Which means your kid is on virtual and isn’t learning as much for the next week. Colds don’t do that. Colds don’t overwhelm hospitals. So it’s beyond what the effects might be on me and how it’s affecting the entire community.
On how the city can be protected from unvaccinated Mardi Gras visitors
Avegno: What we’re trying to do is put those protective layers over the whole city. You might be able to come to New Orleans if you’re not vaccinated, whether you fly, whether you drive… but you can’t do anything when you get here. You can’t go to a bar. You can’t go to a restaurant. You can’t go to a concert. You can have a negative test and that gives us some reasonable assumption that you are not actively infectious. And, you’ll have to wear a mask. If you’re not willing to do that, if you think you won’t have a good time. Then, that’s your choice. What we’re preserving is our health and the safety of our residents. So, if you can’t make those simple choices for us, then we have to make sure that we’re taken care of.