Biden targets COVID
Lincoln Parish’s confirmed case count of the novel coronavirus continues to take a zig-zag pattern so far in November.
As of noon Monday, the Louisiana Department of Health reported 1,757 confirmed local cases of COVID-19 since records began being kept in March. The parish has seen 69 newly diagnosed cases thus far this month.
But some days reflect only a single-case jump from the previous day, while others show no increase. The biggest jumps have been 30 additional cases from Nov. 2 to Nov. 3, and 12 cases from Friday to Sunday.
However, that doesn’t mean those people became ill overnight, nor does it mean all of them still have the virus. That’s simply when their test results were reported. Results reported both by private and state labs often lag several days, if not longer.
COVID-19 has claimed 52 lives in Lincoln Parish.
Meantime, President-elect Joe Biden on Monday continued to urge Americans to wear masks to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Biden in remarks after meeting with his newly formed coronavirus advisory board cautioned that Americans still face “a dark winter” and need to be aggressive about mask wearing and social distancing as infections continue to surge around the country.
“We could save tens of thousands of lives if everyone would just wear a mask for the next few months. Not Democratic or Republican lives, American lives,” Biden said. “Please, I implore you, wear a mask.”
Louisiana remains under a mask mandate as part of the its Phase 3 coronavirus reopening. Gov. John Bel Edwards has said repeatedly he’s convinced Louisianans wearing masks has helped slow the COVID-19 spread.
Though Pfizer announced promising results from a vaccine trial and is on track to file an emergency use application with regulators this month, Biden noted it could be months before a vaccine is widely available.
Biden’s transition team on Monday also announced a coronavirus working group tasked with developing his administration’s pandemic response — something Biden says he wants to put in motion as soon as he takes office in January.
The board will be led by former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler and Yale University public health care expert Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith.
Rick Bright, a vaccine expert and former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, is also on the board.
He had filed a whistleblower complaint alleging he was reassigned to a lesser job because he resisted political pressure to allow widespread use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug pushed by Trump as a COVID-19 treatment.
Other members include Dr. Luciana Borio, who had senior leadership positions at the FDA and National Security Council during the Obama and Trump administrations; Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who servedas a special adviser for health policy in the Obama administration; Dr. Atul Gawande, a senior adviser in the Department of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration and medical writer; and Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who served as an adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson during the George W. Bush administration. Public health offi
cials warn that the nation could be entering the worst stretch yet for COVID-19 as winter sets in and the holiday season approaches, increasing the risk of rapid transmission as Americans travel, shop and celebrate with loved ones.
Biden is starting his transition plans as the pandemic climbs to a new high point. Over the past two weeks, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has risen nearly 65%: the 7-day rolling average for daily new cases in the U.S. went from 66,294 on Oct. 25 to 108,736.7 on Nov. 8.
“The next two months are going to be rough, difficult ones,” said Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious disease specialist and department chairman at the Yale University School of Public Health.
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.
