New Orleans bars are now banned from serving customers indoors under state coronavirus regulations, after the city’s positive percentage rate has dropped more than 5% for the second consecutive week.
The new restrictions, which city officials said will take effect at 11 pm on Wednesday, arrive the day before New Year’s Eve.
Until Wednesday, Orleans parish was the only parish in the state with coronavirus numbers low enough to continue allowing bars to serve customers inside and what allowed them to do so.
But new data released by the Louisiana Department of Health on Wednesday showed that in the week ending December 17, 5.5% of coronavirus tests for Orleans Parish residents were positive. In the previous week, 5.3% of tests in the parish were positive.
Under state restrictions on coronavirus, parishes cannot allow bars to serve customers indoors if the parish’s positivity rate exceeds 5% for two consecutive weeks.
Bars can still serve cups and allow customers to sit outside, according to state rules. However, both bars and restaurants must stop serving alcohol at 11pm.
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Many parishes in the state had already seen their positive percentage rate rise above 5% when Governor John Bel Edwards set it as the limit to allow full-service bar operation while moving the state back to Phase 2 of its plan. reopened amid an increase in coronavirus cases last month. Others followed, leaving New Orleans – which has kept bars closed for longer than anywhere else in the state – with rates just below the threshold that would generate additional restrictions.
Although city officials have warned of an increasing number of coronavirus cases for weeks, Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s government has not implemented any additional restrictions during this period.
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The positivity rate calculated by the state is based on the date a test was done, not the date it was reported to the state, and are reported only one week apart. The calculations that the state uses to determine the positivity rate exclude some tests, such as those processed in laboratories that do not report negative results to the state, making it impossible to replicate them with the publicly available data on the Secretariat of Health website.
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