LA VACCINES & MASK MANDATES? — Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards' chief lawyer says the Democratic governor doesn’t currently have plans to enact broad coronavirus vaccine mandates across Louisiana despite low immunization rates and a surge in COVID-19 cases overwhelming hospitals. The comments from Edwards executive counsel Matthew Block came Monday at a House committee hearing where he and Louisiana’s chief public health officer Dr. Joe Kanter were heckled and criticized by people objecting to masks and vaccines. When things calmed down, Dr. Kanter offered a sobering statistic.
"The number of new cases of Covid diagnosed everyday, we remain as we have the past week and a half, number one in the country," Kanter explained.
There was a time for public comment to the committee. Brandi Pew said she represented a group of parents who were against mask mandates for school children.
"The governor mandated to put this on my kid's face for 7 hours a day, it's child abuse, it's not right," Pew said.
Another concerned parent Jennifer Harding had this to share before the committee.
"We can talk about freedom until we're blue in the face but our kids are going into the hospital, and they're getting sick, and some of them are dying," Harding said. "Good health policies can slow this pandemic and can hopefully stop this pandemic."
Also Monday, the New Orleans public schools system announced that its tracking 299 cases of COVID-19 among students and staff. More than 3,000 others who had close contact with those individuals have been told to stay home under the system’s quarantine guidelines.Anti-mask protesters heckled and disrupted a Louisiana House Health and Welfare Committee Covid hearing on Monday.
Copyright 2021 Red River Radio
