Two Louisiana parishes are recording the highest death rates from coronavirus in the United States.
The parishes, Louisiana’s term for counties, are St. John the Baptist Parish and Orleans Parish, which covers New Orleans. University of Louisiana at Lafayette economics professor Gary Wagner said St. Johns has the highest per capita death rate from the pathogen in the country, followed by Orleans, according to the Wall Street Journal.
By state, only New York is higher than Louisiana in deaths per capita. Louisiana residents are more likely than almost any other state to have other chronic and preexisting conditions that make them more vulnerable to the coronavirus, contributing to the high fatality rate in the state, which has recorded over 13,000 cases and nearly 500 deaths.
“We have more than our fair share of people who have the comorbidities that make them especially vulnerable,” Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards said.
Louisiana residents are also more likely to be hospitalized after contracting the disease. According to Friday data, the state’s deaths-per-hospitalization rate is 22%, compared to 15% in New York City and 16% in Georgia.
Edwards has ordered residents to stay home unless retrieving groceries or medicine, visiting family, exercising, or performing an “essential” job. The order is scheduled to be lifted on April 30, unless the governor directs otherwise.
Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to show Gov. John Bel Edwards’s stay-at-home order was extended to April 30 by the time this report was written. The order originally lasted until April 13.
