New Orleans closes bars and bans to-go beverages for Mardi Gras weekend
The town of New Orleans on Friday announced new COVID-19 limitations to prevent crowds in advance of this year’s Mardi Gras celebration. From February 12 to February 16, the town will shut all bars, ban the sale of to-go beverages, and halt all significant gatherings, amongst other actions.
“We are carrying out this in reaction to the well being crisis that we are in. There are repercussions of not getting motion, the prices are simply too significant,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell reported in a assertion. “There are a few new COVID strains out there which will have an impression on our city.”
“We have to mitigate this virus the ideal way we can. It involves all of us carrying out the suitable issue,” she extra.
Less than the new limitations, foot visitors to well-known Mardi Gras spots, like Bourbon Avenue and Frenchmen Road, will be restricted immediately after 7 p.m. The Clairborne underpass will be totally fenced off.
The information will come just after town officers noticed increasing crowds major up to New Orleans’ most famous getaway. Even though the town canceled all official parades in 2020, Cantrell claimed gatherings have continued to improve primary up to the party, contacting the crowds on Bourbon Avenue final weekend were “unacceptable.”
“To those people that are upset about these limitations, know that when it arrives to the well being of our people, I might somewhat be accused of doing as well considerably than not enough,” Cantrell tweeted Friday.
Bryan Tarnowski/Bloomberg by using Getty
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards will send out agents from numerous regulation enforcement divisions to support implement the new COVID-19 limitations on Mardi Gras weekend.
“A disgrace on us if Mardi Gras 2021 appears to be just about anything like Mardi Gras 2020 with the selection of people with COVID in our point out and throughout the place this calendar year,” Edwards added in a press conference Thursday.
Given that previous calendar year, Louisiana has noted a lot more than 400,000 coronavirus circumstances. 9,076 have died.There are at present 863 new cases in New Orleans, where by 70% of hospitals are at capability.
