Health department to watch COVID-19 cases on college campuses

The Louisiana Department of Health will be looking at on-campus COVID-19 data as it looks to help colleges and universities curb the spread of the virus at their institutions, Louisiana Department of Health Assistant Secretary Dr. Alex Billioux said during Gov. John Bel Edwards’ press conference Thursday.
Billioux, who along with Louisiana Commissioner of Higher Education Kim Hunter Reed met with the university system presidents Wednesday, said the Department of Health’s biggest concern is determining where cases are, if there is a pattern or risk and then helping to stop the spread as soon as possible.
“The information that we’re looking for is really about on-campus students,” he said. “It’s going to be a challenge for us to handle them in the same way that we would say a place of business where you’re talking about maybe a single building or office floors.
“On a campus, you’ve got both on-campus and off-campus living,” Billioux added. “You’ve got sprawling buildings and a variety of places that could be linked to outbreaks, so what we focused on was talking about understanding the cases that are developing associated with on-campus students.”
Billioux said that many universities are trying to manage contract tracing among their students, meaning they could be sharing info with the Department of Health from what they learn through this practice, while the Department of Health could do the same through their contact tracing if it involves a student on their campus.
“What we want to do is maintain the very good relationship that we’ve had up to this point in bi-directional data sharing, so that at the end of the day, as quickly as possible, we’re identifying anything that could present a risk to other students or to the public,” he said.
While Louisiana’s positivity rate dropped to 8.77% — the best rate it has been in a while — as of Aug. 14, Edwards said that residents still should not relax on following safety protocol against the virus as there will be a lot more interactions among people with K-12 and higher education starting school again this month.
“As a result of that, we’re going to see more mobility, more people coming into contact with one another than we have seen probably since early March, so that’s always something to be concerned about,” he said.
As for the positivity rate, though, Edwards said that four of the state’s nine regions have dropped below 10%, too. While the remaining regions are above 10%, he said they are below 12%.
Also, the number of patients hospitalized and on ventilators continued to fall. Seventy-three fewer people were hospitalized, while three fewer were on ventilators as of Wednesday’s noon update by the Office of Public Health. Currently, 1,087 patients remain in hospitals and 178 are on ventilators.
“These decreases have been relatively consistent and sustained. I think we’ve had one day in the last couple weeks where we actually inched up a little bit, but this is the biggest drop that we’ve seen in quite some time,” Edwards said of hospitalizations.
On July 27, the state had 1,600 hospital patients, and Edwards said if the state would have continued on the same pace for an additional three weeks that it had the previous three weeks before reaching that 1,600 mark, Louisiana now would have more than 1,000 additional people hospitalized.
Also during Thursday’s press conference, Edwards reported:
—The state has received the initial payment of $375 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for enhanced unemployment benefits. Edwards said the state is updating its system to include all those who are eligible, and the additional $300 payments will begin next week as soon as possible, but he does not know a particular day they will start.
“I can commit to next week,” he said. “What I want to believe is they’ll start early next week.”
—He has signed a letter to FEMA requesting an increase in the federal government’s cost-share for the pandemic as the state has surpassed the funding threshold to increase the federal government’s payments from 75% to 90%. The measure will need President Donald Trump’s approval.