One year into the coronavirus pandemic that filled up hospital beds, stopped fans from filling the stands at Saints games and altered almost every aspect of daily life, the movement of the virus across Louisiana has changed significantly, our media partners at The Advocate/Times Picayune are reporting.
While New Orleans was Louisiana’s clear epicenter in the virus’s early days — indeed, for a time, it was one of the deadliest hot spots in the entire world — the metro area a year later has actually seen fewer deaths on a per capita basis than the state average. In fact, Orleans Parish’s COVID death rate now ranks No. 47 among Louisiana’s 64 parishes, the newspapers report.
The papers report that meanwhile, a swath of parishes across north Louisiana, including the urban centers of Caddo and Ouachita, have seen death rates that far exceed those in the state’s much more populous south. Many of these places, including a large group along the Interstate 20 corridor, have death rates that are 50% higher than the state average. (That average, by the way, is 213 deaths per 100,000 people, meaning more than 1 in every 500 Louisianans has died from the virus.)
To read the rest of this investigative piece, which includes data, click here.
