NEW ORLEANS — Throughout the COVID-19 outbreak in Louisiana, we've learned that Tuesdays tend to be the roughest when it to comes to reporting new statistics from the state. The numbers seem to always jump up following the weekend.
That's what makes this Tuesday's report from the Louisiana Department of Health all the more promising.
Despite more than 10,000 new coronavirus tests being reported, only 245 of those tests were confirmed positive. It's a .65% increase in total cases, the lowest yet since the first COVID-19 case was found in New Orleans on March 9 (barring this weekend, when the LDH had server issues and only reported partial data).
Separately, 15 new coronavirus-related deaths were reported by the LDH. While tragic, it's the lowest percent change in deaths since March 22.
And with nearly 25,000 new COVID-19 tests recorded in the two days alone, Louisiana may actually reach Governor John Bel Edwards' goal of 200,000 total tests for the month of May.
Hospitalizations, which in a rare step backwards increased by more than 30 on Monday, were back down by half that and now sit at 831 -- the lowest since March 27.
Now, it's about tracking those numbers in the crucial days following the Phase 1 reopening of the economy, which started May 1. The state will need to be on top of any bad trends to know if the dreaded "second spike" in cases, which would force another stay-at-home order, is coming.
Only time will tell if what we're seeing now are the final benefits of the state's lockdown, which was put into place more than two months ago.
Here are the latest numbers from the Louisiana Department of Health as of Tuesday, May 26, 2020.
- Deaths: 2,596 (+11)
- Cases Reported: 38,054 (+245)
- Patients in Hospitals: 831 (-16)
- Patients on Ventilators: 103 (+1)
- Presumed Recovered: 28,700 (Updated every Monday)
- Total Tests Performed: 341,026 (+10,128)
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