Cara the Python is back home at the Blue Zoo in the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge after spending three days out of her enclosure. Taylor Sharp reports Cara was found in a ceiling crawl space…
Cut 1 (28) “ …I’m Taylor Sharp”
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Pfizer is lobbying for a vaccine booster shot but the CDC and FDA say not so fast. Jeff Palermo has more.
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Cara the Burmese Python made headlines this week after her escape from an enclosure at the Blue Zoo in the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge. It naturally had people on edge having a 12-foot snake on the loose, but Dr. Christopher Austin with LSU’s Museum of Natural Science says Cara only posed a minimal threat to humans.
A search team found Cara in a ceiling crawl space three days after it went missing from the Blue Zoo. Cara never went outside of the mall and Dr. Austin says she made a good call.
Once Cara was removed from the wall, she was sent to the LSU vet school to be evaluated. Dr. Austin says it was mostly for precautionary reasons.
After being checked out by a team at the vet school, Cara was returned to her home at the Blue Zoo.
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Only 49.5 percent of Louisianans 18 and older have received a vaccine dose, second-worst in the nation ahead of only Mississippi.
State Health Officer Dr. Joe Kanter says 39 percent of all Louisianans have received at least one dose of a vaccine, but among those most vulnerable, the 65 and older crowd, that number is 80 percent.
In Texas, 61 percent of all adults have received at least one dose.
Kanter says despite how effective the vaccines are they have recorded 1,763 breakthrough cases in Louisiana. Nearly all were mild to moderate cases, but…
Kanter says it is too early to make any conclusive statements but early evidence suggests areas with higher vaccination rates now have noticeably lower levels of community spread.
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Drugmaker Pfizer is advocating for a booster dose of their vaccine as immunity is waning among COVID variants. But the CDC and FDA issued a joint statement against a booster shot right now. LSU Health Shreveport pediatric infectious disease specialist Doctor John Vanchiere says in the meantime we should focus on vaccinating more people.
Vanchiere who served as the lead investigator of the Pfizer vaccine clinical trials at LSH Health Shreveport says the Delta strain has quickly become the leading variant in the state and country,
Vanchiere says Louisiana ranks 49th in the U-S among vaccination and the percentage of those vaccinated in the state is well below 40-percent, even below 30-percent in some areas. Vanchiere says the key is the increase vaccination rates to ward off more variants.
Currently, there are booster clinical trials underway with both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Vanchiere says the pandemic is only at the halfway mark and until we have more data on boosters, those who are unvaccinated need to roll up their sleeves.
On Friday the state reported 967 new COVID cases, 10 fatalities, and 372 hospitalizations. A week ago there were 259 COVID hospitalizations.
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A 14-year-old girl from Harvey won the Scripps National Spelling Bee last night becoming the first person from Louisiana to win the bee. Zaila Avant-garde is also the first African American winner of the 96-year-old tournament. She spelled Murraya correctly to win…
Murraya is a genus of a citrus plant native to southeast Asia, Australia and the Pacific Islands. Here’s how Zaila approached the spelling of the word
Zaila told ABC’s Good Morning America she studies 13-thousand words a day. The Jefferson Parish native also spelling is a hobby, but her true passion is basketball and she holds three Guinness World Records for dribbling multiple basketballs simultaneously. The talented teenager told ESPN about records