Over 2,400 people now lay in Louisiana hospital beds with COVID, by far the highest level of any point during the pandemic. Governor John Bel Edwards says Louisiana is the epicenter of the nation’s latest COVID surge.
Because of this record surge in cases, LSU faculty want the school to either mandate vaccines or allow teachers to go all online for the semester. History Professor Meredith Veldman the pandemic is at worse levels now than it ever was in spring 2020 when the school went entirely remote.
There was no official response from the board to faculty members on that specific request but LSU President William Tate told faculty at the meeting that once the vaccine receives full FDA approval he intends to issue a vaccine mandate.
Delta may be the primary variant in the state right now but up in northwest Louisiana, the first cases of the Lambda variant have been discovered. LSU Health Shreveport Professor of Microbiology and Immunology Jeremy Kamil says there’s no reason to believe that this new variant will bypass vaccines.
Lambda likely crossed the border from Texas where the variant is more prevalent and is thought to be responsible for a surge of cases in Peru.
Interfor Corporation announces it will invest eight million dollars to revive the idled Georgia Pacific sawmill near DeQuincy. The governor’s office says the project will create 170 new jobs. Southwest Louisiana Economic Development Alliance CEO George Swift says the mill was shut down last May due to the pandemic