The slow and gradually building sixth wave of the coronavirus in Louisiana appeared to make a sharp upward turn on Monday, as case counts soared and hospitalizations rose sharply.
The accelerating case counts appear to be a sign of a wave within a wave — a first for the pandemic —prompted by the spread of new variants in recent weeks, health officials said. And while numbers remain low by historic standards, the increases are likely to dash hopes that the current surge might soon be on its way out.
Still, health officials are not yet worried about the kinds of increases that characterized prior waves of the more than two-year-old pandemic.
“There’s not the expectation that we’re going to see a dramatic surge from what we’ve already been seeing for the last month or month and a half,” State Health Officer Dr. Joe Kanter said. “That said, everything with COVID is uncertain and humbles us all.”
Rising cases may be due to new variants
The state Department of Health reported nearly 5,650 new cases on Monday, the highest count since the omicron wave was rising in early January. Over the past week, Louisiana has averaged more than 3,000 new cases a day. That’s more than 50% higher than in the last week of June and nearly 32 times as many cases as the state was averaging in early April, when the pandemic was at a historic ebb.
The highest case counts recorded in Louisiana came in late January, when the state was averaging almost 16,000 cases a day.
The exact count, however, remains murky since many -- perhaps most -- residents are now availing themselves of self-test kits that are often not reported to the state.
Cases had been slowly rising in the state in recent months, driven in large part by the BA.2 and BA.2.12.1 subvariants of the omicron strain. The current rise appears to be attributed to two new variants — BA.4 and BA.5 — that have proven to be very infectious.
“If you look on the graph right now, it’s already apparent that this surge is going to be longer in duration than our prior surges have been, because we essentially had a switch in variants,” Kanter said. “We believe we would have peaked and started to descend a couple of weeks ago had BA.4 and BA.5 not taken off like they did.”
The new BA.4 and BA.5 variants made up about 62% of all cases in the first week of July in the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention region that covers Louisiana. Those variants have shown to spread easily but, so far, have typically resulted in less serious illness and death.
It remains unclear how much that has to do with the variants themselves and how much is attributable to protection offered by vaccines and prior infections.
“About 95% of the state is vaccinated or has had COVID in the past or both, and while neither of those are 100% protection, they help,” Kanter said.
Hospitalizations increase, but severe illnesses relatively low
Still, hospitalizations have also been climbing. There are now more than 625 patients with COVID in Louisiana hospitals, twice as many as a week ago.
“There’s a lot of COVID out there being spread, and the risk of being exposed to COVID is high in every part of the state right now," Kanter said. "While on average these cases are mild, that’s not true for everyone."
There were 14 patients on ventilators on Sunday, about 2% of those hospitalized. That percentage, representing those who need the most serious care, is far lower than in prior waves, when patients on ventilators made up 20% or more of all those in the hospital.
Meanwhile, the spike in hospitalized patients, while worrisome, is much less steep than some earlier waves. During the delta wave, Louisiana had more than 3,000 people hospitalized with COVID - nearly five times the current number.
The LDH doesn’t precisely track which patients are hospitalized primarily for COVID as opposed to some other condition. But Kanter said it appears the climb in hospitalizations is being driven primarily by patients for whom the coronavirus is exacerbating other health issues such as heart conditions. That differs from early in the pandemic, when many patients who tested positive were left hospitalized by the ravages of the virus itself. It's also distinct from the omicron surge, when there were far more patients who were hospitalized for unrelated conditions but happened to test positive for the virus.
Deaths have remained relatively low but steady, with several new deaths reported each weekday.
No new restrictions planned
There are currently no plans to reimpose restrictions on businesses and gatherings, Kanter said. Those measures were largely driven by a need to stem prior surges that threatened to overwhelm the healthcare system with patients, something that is not a concern at this point.
“We’re nowhere close to threatening the capacity of our hospitals as we were in prior surges,” he said.
However, Kanter encouraged residents — particularly those who are immunocompromised or have other health conditions that could lead to severe illness from COVID — to take precautions such as wearing a high quality N95 or KN95 mask and restricting gatherings.
