UPDATED: Teachers eligible for COVID vaccine

Teachers, school support staff members and daycare employees will be eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations beginning Monday, Gov. John Bel Edwards said Thursday at a press conference.
Pregnant women and people 55-64 with certain health conditions will also become eligible for coronavirus vaccine Monday.
The broader eligibility will add about 450,000 people to the list of those who may make appointments for COVID-19 shots.
“[Teachers] play a critical role in our COVID recovery and, of course, in the education of our children,” Edwards said.
You can learn more about the vaccination process at https://ldh.la.gov/covidvaccine/.
The health conditions that make 55- to 64-year-olds eligible for vaccinations include:
—Cancer
—Chronic kidney disease
—Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD
—Down syndrome
—Certain heart conditions
—Obesity and severe obesity
—Smoking
—Type 2 diabetes
—Sickle cell disease
Louisiana has received notice that its weekly allocation of vaccine will again be increased, this time supplemented with supplies of the Pfizer vaccine instead of the Moderna vaccine, Edwards said.
Both vaccines require two shots, but the period between shots is 21 days for the Pfizer vaccine and 28 days for the Moderna formulation.
That good news is offset by delays in deliveries of vaccine to Louisiana this week, Edwards said.
The state was still waiting Thursday for deliveries that normally would have occurred Monday or Tuesday.
The delay is weather-related, Edwards said, and is caused in part by the closure of airports from which vaccine supplies are flown to individual states.
Louisiana has administered more than 812,000 first and second doses of vaccine. Louisiana ranks 11th among the states in total vaccinations and eighth in the number of second doses administered, Edwards said.
Officials hope the pace of vaccination will pick up with the expected approval of the Johnson & Johnson one-dose vaccine in March.
AstraZenaca is also at work on a one-shot vaccine.
But March looms large in the COVID fight in another way. That’s when modeling suggests the UK variant of the COVID virus, which is up to 50% more easily transmissible than the original virus, will become the dominant form in the United States.
Edwards said that makes it important to continue following COVID mitigation measures, including wearing masks, washing hands frequently and avoiding gatherings with people from outside your immediate household.
On Thursday, the state reported 832 new COVID-19 cases and 15 fatalities for the previous 24 hours.
The number of COVID-positive people in hospitals is at 823, still stubbornly high but less than half the number reported in early January.
Eighteen new confirmed COVID cases were reported Thursday for St. Mary, St. Martin and Assumption parishes.
The St. Mary Parish government said Wednesday that bars will be allowed to reopen. '
The COVID test positivity rate here has dropped below 5% for two consecutive weeks.
The state remains in modified Phase 2 restrictions, including a mask mandate.