From the Editor: What the COVID resurgence looks like here

The special COVID-19 measures Gov. John Bel Edwards imposed July 11 — the mask mandate, the bar closures and the 50-person crowd limit — will expire Friday. So in one of his regular press conferences, either Tuesday or Thursday, we’ll hear whether those measures will continue or Louisiana will move from Phase Two precautions to less restrictive Phase Three measures.
Don’t be disappointed if Louisiana doesn’t move into Phase Three. We’ve been warned.
At a press conference Thursday, Edwards cautioned Louisiana people not to expect big changes.
It’s true that the resurgence of COVID-19 that followed the June 4 move into Phase Two, and persuaded Edwards to make masks mandatory and close the bars, shows signs of tailing off. But that’s not all that has happened.
The top medical officials at the two biggest Lafayette hospitals, Our Lady of Lourdes and Lafayette General, appeared with Edwards last week to make a plea for the use of masks to slow the spread of COVID-19. Their hospitals are nearly full, they said, and they’re starting to see bad outcomes resulting from delays in treatment for non-COVID conditions such as cancer.
And, the officials said, the medical staffs are nearly worn out after five months of pandemic.
As of Monday, Louisiana Department of Health Region 4, which includes Lafayette and St. Martin, reported that 149 of 181 intensive care unit beds were in use. As for total hospital beds, 1,241 of 1,703 were in use.
There’s less pressure on hospitals in Region 3, which includes St. Mary and Assumption. There, 60 of 96 ICU beds and 418 of 720 total hospital beds are in use.
Then, on Thursday, we got the news that Louisiana has the highest rate of COVID infection per 100,000 people in the country.
Why the second spike? Because the increase began to appear in mid-June, or roughly one COVID incubation period after the move to Phase Two, some say we reopened too early. Others say the Memorial Day holiday marked the beginning of summertime activities, which too often didn’t include masks or social distancing. Maybe we were overconfident, or just tired of anti-COVID measures.
Whatever the reason, here’s what the resurgence looked like in St. Mary, St. Martin and Assumption:
—On June 15, 359 COVID-19 cases had been reported in St. Mary in the previous three months. Another 351 had been reported for St. Martin, and 274 in Assumption.
As of July 31, six weeks later, the number of cases in St. Mary had nearly quadrupled to 1,356, had more than quadrupled in St. Martin to 1,461 and nearly doubled in Assumption to 531.
—On June 15, the three parishes together had reported 74 COVID-related deaths. On July 31, the number of deaths was up by half to 111.
Statewide, the number of cases rose from about 47,000 to about 114,000 June 15-July 31. The number of deaths rose more slowly, increasing by 905. But hospitalizations exploded, rising from 568 to 1,524.
That’s the picture as the administration ponders the proper level of COVID precautions, and thousands of St. Mary children get ready to go back to school Monday.

Violations?
On Monday we came across a media report that said nearly 700 Louisiana businesses, and even some public-sector facilities, had been cited by the State Fire Marshal’s Office for failing to live up to Open Safely guidelines. The story included the complete list.
We counted 30 St. Mary businesses and other entities on the list and prepared to report on them. Some had as many as six reported violations after a single July inspection.
So we asked the always helpful folks at the State Fire Marshal’s Office for the list.
It came in spreadsheet form with a caution: The records don’t actually show citations. They show inspections performed and violations found, and each involved some advice about how to comply with the COVID guidance. Still, violations are violations, and we started going down the list of St. Mary entities to see what they had to say.
The first two people we contacted, both of whom are in charge of facilities with reported violations, came back with the same reply, which could be paraphrased as “huh?”
Both said they didn’t know anything about any violations. They didn’t deny them or make excuses. They were asking us for information about what was going on.
“I’m really interested to know what the violation actually was,” one said in an email.
The other person we called contacted the State Fire Marshal’s Office directly and learned that some of the violation reports were in error. Compliance reports were checked as “No” when they should have been checked as “N/A,” or not applicable, he said. Some of the violations were connected to rules for indoor dining at restaurants that had never resumed indoor dining.
“We are still on the hunt to find out why we were not notified, since it was going into a data bank that was public,” he said in an email.
Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review.