Local COVID deaths up again; mask mandate extended

COVID-19 has claimed two more Lincoln Parish lives. The confirmed death toll now stands at 92 since the pandemic began, according to Wednesday’s update from the Louisiana Department of Health.

That’s two additional deaths since mid-August and 20 since January.

Confirmed local cases of the virus are also still on the rise. LDH reports 86 more cases have been confirmed since Friday, bringing the total to 4,190 since the count began in March 2020.

Meanwhile, Louisiana remains under an indoor mask mandate for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.

The mandate was set to expire Sept. 1, but Gov. John Bel Edwards reupped it late last week as Hurricane Ida barreled toward the state.

“We have started to see some improvement in our data that literally started two weeks after the current mask mandate was put into place. Even with these improvements, we are still much worse off than we ever were in our first three surges,” Edwards said in a prehurricane press conference late Friday during which he extended the mask mandate.

Edwards did not say how long the extension will last. After several days of record-setting spikes, the state last week saw new COVID cases and hospitalizations drop by 15%.

“None of the gains that we have made are irreversible,” Edwards said,

He said 100% of the new COVID cases the state has seen are attributable to the highly transmissible Delta variant.

“Our next public health emergency will maintain the indoor mask mandate in public spaces for those vaccinated and unvaccinated,” Edwards said. “It will be the exact same mandate that we currently have in place. We know that these mitigation measures work. We know that the vaccines are safe and effective.”