NEW ORLEANS (CN) — At his own pre-wedding party on a river outside New Orleans last month, Brian Coore, who’d had a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine a few days before, contracted Covid-19 from two friends who had each been fully vaccinated and were asymptomatic.
Coore became ill, though only mildly, and soon after passed the virus to his 21-month-old daughter.
The child also had only mild symptoms, but Thursday morning Coore’s new wife, Sarah Coore, who received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine in March, woke with a sore throat and a now-familiar dread that she could become seriously ill or die, amid another surge in Covid-19 infections across Louisiana.
“Negative for Covid! But scary how full that waiting room was,” Sarah Coore said in a text Thursday after stopping into an urgent care clinic for a rapid Covid-19 test.
Louisiana is experiencing a fourth surge of Covid-19, brought on by the highly contagious delta variant and the state’s low vaccination rates. It is currently the worst outbreak in the country.
On Wednesday, the Bayou State reported 5,388 new cases – its third-highest daily count since the start of the pandemic.
In New Orleans, cases are up nine times compared to last week.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell has responded by issuing an indoor mask advisory Thursday asking vaccinated and unvaccinated people to go back to wearing masks. She warned that events might have to be canceled if the city can’t get the virus under control.
Governor John Bel Edwards Friday followed on the mayor's heels druing a press conference and urged state residents to wear masks indoors whether or not they have been vaccinated. So far, only advisories have been issued, no mandates.
Governor John Bel Edwards is expected to address the rise in Covid-19 cases in a press conference Friday afternoon. Some speculate he could reinstate a statewide mask mandate.
“The alarming transmission data we’ve seen in the last two weeks, coupled with an inadequate vaccination rate, leaves us no choice,” New Orleans Health Department Director Dr. Jennifer Avegno told local NBC affiliate WDSU of the city’s decision to reintroduce a mask rule.
“People who continue to refuse to take the lifesaving Covid vaccine are now also putting the entire community in jeopardy. We must take action now to slow the rapid spread of the Delta variant,” Avegno added.
If Avegno is frustrated by the current state of the pandemic, she isn’t alone.
An internist in a New Orleans-area hospital who has been intubating people who are desperately ill from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic and has had countless patients succumb agreed to a telephone interview with Courthouse News on the condition of anonymity because of the “highly politicized state” of the virus crisis.
She and her colleagues are experiencing various levels of outrage, she said.
“All of us – we’re all super angry” that vaccine levels are so low across Louisiana, she said. Statewide, just 36% of the population is fully vaccinated.
The internist also said she and her colleagues are angry to still be on the frontlines, putting themselves and their families at risk, in a battle that appears at this point to be futile.
As for Brian Coore’s experience of getting Covid-19 from asymptomatic friends who had been vaccinated, the internist stressed the importance of getting the full dose of any vaccine.
“Unfortunately, there are some breakthrough cases,” she said, “even while the vaccination still offers protection from the delta variant." But she said the breakthrough cases are almost always much milder – as in Coore’s case.
“There’s still a reason to get the vaccine. But it does hammer in the point that if you’ve only had one dose, you’re not fully vaccinated,” she said. “It takes two doses, which means it takes fully six weeks to achieve the effects, for the two doses. I cannot stress that enough. This is an advanced planning situation.”
She said that in general she’s noticed “there are more people who are open to the vaccine situation” because of the uptick in cases. Unfortunately, for some people it takes losing a family member to realize the severity of the current pandemic, she said.
“If we have everyone vaccinated then we have reduced coronavirus to a mild illness," she said.
She said the virus could effectively be eliminated from the community if 80 to 90% of the population was fully vaccinated: “That’s the goal here, is to try to get more people to take the vaccine. So we can have our kids at school – and so that masks aren’t something we have to wear everywhere.”
For its part, the New Orleans Public School Board so far insists schools will open as scheduled in two weeks, despite the coronavirus surge.
“There will be no delay in the reopening of NOLA Public Schools,” a media liaison wrote in an email Thursday.
As in other cities nationwide, the last three times New Orleans area schools closed due to a spike in Covid-19 cases, it happened with jarring suddenness, leaving parents – especially single parents and those working in frontline positions – in untenable situations.
“As stated by the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics, in-person learning is necessary to provide the best quality education to students, and we will strive to preserve it throughout the 2021-2022 school year with heightened safety and health protocols as we continue to navigate the Covid-19 pandemic,” the school district spokesperson said.
But a refusal to get the shot “is the hill that some people want to die on – both figuratively and literally,” the internist said.
She said only one or two of the Covid-19 patients she has seen have been vaccinated. At some other hospitals, she's heard that all coronavirus patients were unvaccinated.
“The people who are coming in are the people who decided not to get vaccinated. Some of them to a certain extent have remorse. But others prefer to hold to this idea they acquired before the pandemic that they are better off with a tube down their throat than a shot in their arm,” she said. “I think a lot of us are really frustrated, and we’re sad, and were exhausted.”
The frustration stems in part from the fact that Covid-19 is a preventable illness.
“We’ve failed to prevent it as a society," she said. “The reality is this is not going to go away, it’s just going to mutate,” unless by some miracle many more people get the vaccine.
“It’s like watching a train crash in slow motion," she added. "There’s not much we can do. We just have to keep showing up at work for the next day.”
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