Lafayette Mayor-President Josh Guillory held a press briefing Wednesday with other local officials at Lafayette City Hall on COVID-19.
Guillory and medical representatives presented an update on the current status related to the coronavirus in Louisiana and Lafayette Parish.
"I'm relieved to share that we still have no confirmed cases in Lafayette or Acadiana," Guillory said. "We are experiencing some delays with getting test results back. We still expect the situation to change very soon. We have had some tests come back negative which is encouraging. We are shipping off more tests everyday and starting today our volume of testing is significantly on the rise. Our first day of screening citizens for suitability to be tested for COVID-19 and for administering tests has been a major success."
A screening site opened Wednesday at the Cajundome. There were hundreds of residents screened and more than 90 COVID-19 tests administered on the first day, according to Guillory.
"I believe that bringing these capabilities online at this early stage will pay off for our community," said Mayor-President Josh Guillory. "Our call center opened this morning for citizens dialing 311 and then 1 to get information to whether they qualified to be tested. We handled thousands of calls in a very short period of time. I'm confident that this preliminary screening was key to preventing an overload of traffic at the Cajundome site on our first day, but also prevents unnecessary visits to our healthcare facilities. Starting an hour ago our 311 call center is being staffed 24/7 by healthcare professionals from the Schumacher Group."
He said there will ultimately have five testing sites set up, if needed.
As of 4:30 pm on March 18, 2020, there are 257 cases in the state and seven people have died from the disease. Check with the Department of Health for the most update information.
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