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Since my last update in the newspaper on May 4, there has been a dramatic decrease in COVID-19 related deaths and cases of new infection in St. John the Baptist Parish.

Since our first reported case of infection on March 19, our parish had totaled 771 cases of new infection with 71 deaths from March 19 – May 1. During the entire month of May, our parish recorded only 89 new cases of infection with 13 deaths. The number of infections and deaths in nursing homes in our parish has also slowed dramatically in May, reflecting improved methods of detection and isolation procedures.

Encouraging news out of Italy in the past few days indicates that the COVID-19 virus is now weaker than it was just one to two months ago, as testing there has showed a large reduction in the number of virus particles detected on nasal swab tests. This has coincided with a big decline in COVID-19 infections and deaths in Italy.

The situation in our parish has improved dramatically in the past 30 days and hopefully will continue into the summer months.

Dr. Christy A. Montegut is the elected coroner of St. John the Baptist Parish and can be contacted by phone at (985) 652-3344.