Coronavirus death rate for New Orleans is double that of New York City
New Orleans has emerged as one of the country’s coronavirus hotspots, with a death rate per-capita double that of New York City, according to a troubling new report.
Gary Wagner, an economics professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said the parish of Orleans, which encompasses the Big Easy, saw a coronavirus death rate of 37.93 per 100,000 people as of Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Meanwhile, the death rate for the Big Apple was 18.86 per 100,000 people, the outlet reported.
Louisiana has reported more than 12,400 cases as of Sunday with the death toll climbing over 400, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The state is second only to New York for the number of deaths per capita, the newspaper reported.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards attributed his state’s troubling death rates to the prevalence of other health conditions among residents, according to the report. The state sees high rates of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and kidney disease.
“We have more than our fair share of people who have the comorbidities that make them especially vulnerable,” Edwards told the outlet.
Dr. Alex Billioux, the state’s public health chief, said they’ve taken aggressive steps, such as increasing testing, to prevent Louisiana from becoming the next Italy, which has seen more than 15,000 deaths.
“We all look at the video of what’s going on in settings like Italy. We really, really, really hope that we are doing what we need to do to not be on that trajectory,” Billioux told the outlet. “By the end of this epidemic, every family is going to be touched.”
