Omicron variant is now in U.S., but Louisiana COVID situation remains steady

The Omicron COVID variant has now been found in the United States with 2 reported cases and likely thousands to come in the coming months ahead.

But so far, so good as Louisiana's COVID picture remains mostly clear even with the uncertainty ahead.

The state reported 473 new COVID cases on December 2, a number that is just a fraction of the 2,000-3,000 new cases per day the state was adding during the peak months of the Delta variant, which caused cased to surge in the summer in most Southern states, including Louisiana.

At the time of the Delta Wave's peak, the state had more than 3,000 COVID hospitalizations and facilities – including in the Bayou Region – were so full that bedding was sometimes completely unavailable.

Today, our situation is far better. On December 2, the state reports 206 COVID hospitalizations and 29 COVID patients on ventilators. Our hospitalizations have dipped slightly above and below 200 in recent weeks as we plateau slightly from the ending of the Delta Wave.

In Region 3, there were 11 COVID hospitalizations reported on December 2 with just 1 patient on a ventilator.

Those numbers dwarf the 203 COVID hospitalizations we had this past summer at the peak of the last wave.

In Lafourche, we have a 4.6% positivity, and our positivity has been below 5% for most of the fall – the same as most of the other parishes around the state.

All of these numbers are favorable to where we were at the same time last year. On December 2 in 2020, COVID hospitalizations were at 1,325. In those days, the COVID vaccine program was in its infancy. Today, more than 2 million Louisiana residents have completed the shots and hundreds of thousands more have received their third-shot booster.

How long the current success will last is not known because of Omicron, which is causing problems around the world and which has now made its arrival in America.

Medical experts say that the new variant has many different mutations, but studies are ongoing to determine exactly how much more dangerous – if at all – this new variant is coming to other strains of the virus.