New information coming from Governor Edwards Tuesday. The White House has agreed to support Louisiana’s testing plan to test 200,000 people a month starting in May.
“That’s a significant ramp up from where we are right now,” Edwards said. “We’ve done a little more than 151,000 tests and that dates all the way back to early March.”
The state will start testing more asymptomatic people as its capacity ramp up. Edwards says initially they will target those in nursing homes and prisons with COVID-19.
“As we seek to keep a lid on this and to keep the case numbers low as possible, transitioning to testing these individuals especially when you have the additional capacity to do it is going to be critically important,” he said.
Some good news was shared. Edwards says FEMA provided the state with two million cotton masks from Hanes. Most of these have been distributed to parishes. Several parishes already have started giving them out to the public.
Edwards and doctor Dr. Alex Billioux from the office of public health once again urging everyone to continue practicing social distancing.
“While we are excited and grateful that there will be testing resources coming to the state, 200,000 [tests] is still not enough to test 4.7 million Louisianans,” Dr. Billioux said.