New Orleans' Remarkable Recovery: City Has Gone 3 Days Without A Coronavirus Death

[fleur-de-lisa]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2020/05/19/new-orleans-remarkable-recovery-city-has-gone-3-days-without-a-coronavirus-death/#5259e286116f

May 19, 2020

New Orleans, which once held the unfortunate distinction of having the highest per capita coronavirus death rate of any city in the country, hasn’t reported a new death from coronavirus in the past three days — highlighting a remarkable turnaround for a city that was one of the hardest hit during the early weeks of the coronavirus outbreak.

KEY FACTS:

This is the first time the city hasn’t recorded a Covid-19 death over three consecutive days since March 11-13, the period immediately preceding the city’s first death on March 14.

By March 26, the city had the highest per capita death rate of anywhere in the U.S. — more than twice as high as any other locality in the country — according to an analysis from The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate, with more total Covid-19 deaths there at the time than in Manhattan.

Health experts believe the fast spread early on was likely fueled by the city’s Mardi Gras celebrations, which came to an end Feb. 25.

Over the Carnival season, it’s estimated some 1.4 million revelers from around the world packed into the city, which has a permanent population that sits just under 400,000.

After the city enacted stay-at-home orders in mid-March, the spread quickly slowed, with a New York Times analysis finding that by mid-April the city had the fastest decrease of new cases among any of the nation’s metro areas.

New Orleans was able to move to its Phase 1 reopening on Saturday, opening restaurants, bars and many other businesses to reopen in a limited capacity.