NEW ORLEANS — Gov. John Bel Edwards addressed the public Friday to answer a question on a lot of parents’ minds: Why would we send our kids to school with a mask on?
“Why wouldn’t we?” Edwards said. “We know better than to continue to believe that kids can’t and don’t get sick from COVID-19.”
According to Edwards, there are 13 children hospitalized with COVID-19 at Children’s Hospital in New Orleans, including 6 under the age of 2-years-old. Four of those children are in the ICU.
“This week, more than 6,000 children tested positive,” Edwards said. “We have more children sick with COVID-19 than we have at any other time I the pandemic.”
Ochsner officials said earlier this week that the positivity rate in children has gone from 4% to 24% in the last five weeks.
Dr. John Vanchiere, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at LSU, said that very few of those cases are serious, but that the cases that are serious shouldn't be taken lightly.
"You’ve heard about the children who are in our hospitals now. They’re not great numbers of children, but they’re our children," he said. "Children in Louisiana have died of COVID and more will die."
Dr. Vanchiere also spoke directly to parents who are against the mask mandate and may send their children to school without a mask.
"This is not a time for politics, for fighting and threatening lawsuits about having to wear a mask. Masks save lives," Dr. Vanchiere said. "And if you’re a pro-life Louisiana citizen like I am, wear your mask. It’s that simple.”
Edwards presser comes after push back from parents and from Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. Landry issued an opinion Friday saying that Gov. Edwards did not have the authority to require students wear masks in schools. Landry argued that only the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has that authority to enforce a mask mandate in schools.
Edwards argued that the Attorney General's opinion is wrong.
"He's going out of his way to undermine public confidence in mitigation measures," Edwards said when asked about Landry's efforts to stop masking in schools. "It is sad. It's regrettable. It's also irresponsible and it is dangerous."
Louisiana has seen its fourth straight day of record-setting hospitalizations in the last COVID-19 update of the week, continuing a grim trend as cases and deaths rise in the pandemic's fourth wave.
Across the state, 2,421 people were hospitalized with COVID as of Friday. That's a jump of 71 from the previous day's total. 90% of those patients are unvaccinated.
More than 6,100 new cases were also reported Friday alongside 48 new deaths linked to the virus. Over 11,000 people have died in Louisiana from coronavirus-related health issues or the virus itself since the pandemic began last March.
Louisiana is struggling with the record-setting fourth surge of COVID-19 driven by the delta variant and low vaccination rates. The state has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation and is seeing one of the country’s worst COVID-19 spikes per capita.
For the past three days, each new update to the state's coronavirus dashboard has broken hospitalization records, with 2,350 COVID patients hospitalized as of Thursday.
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