Entergy is proud to support programing on LPB and greener practices that preserve Louisiana.

The goal of our environmental and sustainability initiatives really is to ensure that our kids and future generations can be left with a cleaner planet.

Additional support provided by the Fred B. and Ruth B. Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana.

And the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting with support from viewers like you.

If you have not been able to keep up your monthly rent, it's time to apply another extension and help to keep people in their homes, not wanting to catch a potentially fatal illness.

In a time of global pandemic is not a disability.

LSU faculty siding against the university's Covid policies.

It's an already existing drug that is just using a different formulation of it.

Another clinical trial begins to broaden the fight against Covid.

Now, I know being fully vaccinated does not protect you 100 percent, but I got it.

Breakthrough cases and what they mean.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Andre Móre.

Welcome to SWG Kerosene Siras off tonight.

Vaccinated or not, the mask mandate is back in place for everyone in Louisiana.

If you're indoors, you have to wear a mask.

Governor John Bel Edwards reinstated the order Tuesday after Covid hospitalizations soared to an all time high.

Scientists with the Covid modeling hub say this surge may be the longest and is not likely to peak for another month.

mid-September, they say Louisiana still leads the country in Covid cases per capita.

But this time, it's kids and adults.

Twenty nine and younger getting sick.

The governor continues to plead for people to get vaccinated for the sake of children who can't get the shot themselves.

And for our hospitals working at the absolute max.

Here's the latest from today's Covid media briefing.

Today we're reporting six thousand one hundred sixteen additional cases of COVID 19.

We are also very sadly reporting more than I'm sorry, 48 new deaths.

That's more than 200 deaths this week that we've reported since Monday.

If we don't slow transmission, the cases will continue to grow.

The hospitalizations will continue to grow, and so will the deaths.

So we have three goals right now.

And this is the point that we stressed in the unified command group meeting this morning.

They are to increase vaccinations, to slow transmission through proven mitigation measures such as universal masking and surging our staffing capacity in Louisiana so that we can continue to deliver.

Vital lifesaving care to both Covid patients and noncommitted patients alike.

I do have.

Hope I mean, I know we're going to get through this, how quickly we get through it.

And how many people get sick between now and then?

How many people die between now and then?

Is largely going to be up to us.

And this new mandate with the masks will stay in place until at least September 1st.

Now we'll look at other headlines that are in the news.

The court of Appeals ruling in New Orleans this week had both sides of a lawsuit against oil companies claiming victory.

On one hand, you had a ruling made last year against big oil, partially reversed.

But the lawyer for the parishes involved says the decision still means at least 15 of the 42 lawsuits go to state trials.

The performance of public school students on key standardized tests fell this past school year.

Leaders say it provides the first glimpse of how students struggled during the coronavirus outbreak.

The Leap 2025 exams measure a student's aptitude in math, English science and social studies.

Those in grades three through 12 took the test in the spring after they were previously canceled.

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether state police leaders obstructed justice to protect troupers seen on body camera video in the case of Ronald Green.

Police stopped and arrested Greene in north Louisiana, punching, dragging and stunning him before he died at a hospital later.

It has been long alleged that troopers lied about what actually went down that night of the deadly arrest.

The legislature's two day veto session, which saw Republicans unable to override any of the governor's bill rejections, cost taxpayers 76000 dollars.

The expenses involved the one hundred and sixty dollar daily per diem and mileage expenses.

A coastal barrier island used by Pirate Jean Lafitte in the early 19th century is undergoing a 100 million dollar rebirth to raise, reshape and revive it.

The governor says the work on West Granter is one of the most historically and ecologically important efforts in our state's history.

Well, there was that deadline, but now another extension happened this week to help renters and landlords unable to make payments.

The good news there is money and help courtesy of Washington.

But renters must send notice of their problem.

I talked with Assistant Commissioner of Administration Desiree Honoré Thomas.

She is coordinating a multiagency effort.

This program was appropriated to stabilize rental housing and rental occupancy for people who were adversely impacted, of course, by Covid.

And that means that they may have become unemployed, not necessarily because they contract their employment may have closed down.

And so they are unemployed.

Did you begin to get tons of phone calls as the July 31st deadline approached from panicked people who felt like they'd be out on the streets?

Because that's that's what we've heard.

So the volume of calls was not necessarily what you would have expected.

However, approximately three weeks ago, we saw the the increase in applications.

I think people were anticipating July 30 first, and we were hovering around right at a thousand new applications for this program.

And that was good that people were doing taking that action.

Yes.

Early.

Yeah.

Eight hundred.

And so the week before and then last week, we had a keen spike to seventeen hundred.

I think if you looked around our state, you would see people could not make.

They were laid off some some businesses like if you take a casino, they they didn't have in-person traffic.

So there's a lot of people it takes a lot of people to run a casino.

A lot of restaurants.

Right.

They had no in-person traffic, so they were laid off.

Wait.

Staff, you may have had retail staff who were laid off because there was no retail activity.

A lot of jobs that were indoor jobs and some, you know, some really dependent upon personal contact.

Definitely.

Right.

Were laid off a lot of services.

You mentioned that the Treasury is in charge of these funds instead of HUD or some other agency, which is a little different.

But how does that money get to state and local governments from the U.S. Treasury after this appropriation was passed and signed off by President Trump in December of twenty twenty?

They actually very shortly thereafter in early twenty one, sent the money directly to the Louisiana Treasury.

I can tell you my experience is when the federal government doesn't normally just send you the money upfront.

All right.

So I think they recognize, of course, the need because the money even came before they release the first set of program guidelines.

It's a housing program.

Yeah.

Housing programs usually come under the Housing and Urban Development Department and the federal government.

And so there are different sets of rules.

And I think they may have had the foresight to want to write a different set of rules that were contrary to the rules that HUD had.

But it has come with its challenges.

Has it cut through red tape and different things that you would typically obstacles that you come upon?

Or have there been new ones that there have been new ones in this program?

Someone applied and then you had to touch the other person to say if it was the landlord and the landlord applied, we had to go talk to the tenant and find out if the tenant was actually eligible and if the eligible tenant applied first.

Then we had to make sure that he really was renting from the landlord.

And so, yeah, so like to make sure that they were on the up and up sort of or.

Yeah.

And yes, there's a lot of room when you have federal programs like this for fraud.

What we're concerned about is if you really need it, which means just ask yourself the question, are you behind in your rent?

Right.

I think it's time to apply.

If you have not been able to keep up your monthly rent, it's time to apply.

Yeah, I think what we are afraid of and what some people have done is waited to the landlord initiate an eviction and then it's urgent.

We received a call yesterday where someone said it was urgent, but then we find out he only applied on Thursday.

So, of course, his application hadn't even really made it into the system yet.

Sure.

So don't wait until you are about to be evicted.

And again, that number and website, you need the number eight, seven, seven, four or five.

Nine six five five five.

The website LA State Rent dot com, it's for renters and landlords impacted by Covid.

Well, Senator Bill Cassidy praised the infrastructure bill hammered out in a bipartisan fashion this week.

Cassidy's office says it's expected to pass either tomorrow or Monday.

But the senator is clearly pumped up about it.

We've been working pretty hard, long hours and early nights and late nights, et cetera, to finalize what I think is historic legislation that invests in our nation's infrastructure and along the way creates better paying jobs for working Americans .

And we do that without raising taxes is one point two trillion dollars or five hundred and fifty billion of new money on top of that which was already allocated.

It's bipartisan, paid for and doesn't add to the debt or deficit.

Just think of the practical thing.

It will shorten somebodies commute coming from Ascension Parish into downtown Baton Rouge for their work or someone from Livingston going across the West Baton Rouge.

It'll make homes in southwest Louisiana, north Louisiana less likely to flood.

It extends broadband to underserved areas of our state.

So in central Louisiana, there are areas without broadband.

It helps.

It provides money along with other funds for redoing the sewer system in New Orleans and other cities.

Specifically, the bill contains about six billion dollars for Louisiana.

Roads and highways nationwide, 40 billion dollars for bridges.

Forty seven billion dollars nationwide for resiliency initiatives such as coastal restoration and flood mitigation.

You can list the five biggest priorities for our state.

And whether it's one or five, you would agree it would be the Kalamazoo River Ship Channel Bridge.

It would be I 49 Northi, 49 South, the the quote unquote new Mississippi River Bridge expansion or a new new bridge in Baton Rouge.

It would be six laning the 12 through the Florida parishes.

You could throw in there, by the way.

Extensive sewer work down in Orleans Parish.

And, you know, I could go on.

So those are pretty well, I think, established as the state's priorities.

As we've said, the rising Covid cases are a threat to the younger population.

Schools around the state and LSU working to manage this surge.

And that leaves a lot of opinions on the best way to do it.

Cara, S.C., reports from LSU.

The Copa cases and hospitalizations are growing despite the availability of the vaccine.

This is troubling for everyone, but especially for Rosemary Peters Hill.

My youngest son is immunocompromised, and every time he he's been in school since he was two years old, I want to say.

And every time he gets the cold that's making the rounds, it's 10 times worse than when anybody else gets it and it lasts longer.

We've had to keep him home for lengthy periods of time.

Her five year old Nathanial is sensitive to most illnesses, but Covid poses an entirely different threat if he catches it.

The consequences could be severe, life-Threatening even.

We live in kind of constant dread that he's going to be in contact with somebody who is positive with Covid .

The fear of him getting sick was always there.

But Peters Hill was comforted by the fact that she was working her job virtually at LSU.

But that's changing this fall.

Elzie was asked her faculty to come in for in-person classes and teach like they did before.

The pandemic mask mandates are enforced, but that isn't enough for Peters Hill.

She wants them to implement a vaccine mandate for students.

That way, she won't worry about bringing the virus home to her son, who wasn't old enough to be vaccinated.

The school says that any faculty that aren't comfortable or have any comorbidities should file a petition under Americans with Disabilities Act to work virtually as I have already sent the paperwork in.

And I am not happy about it because.

Not wanting to catch a potentially fatal illness in a time of global pandemic is not a disability.

She isn't the only one that filed a petition.

Jerry Suppos, another professor at the university, put in his paperwork, too.

He has his own health problems that put him at higher risk for severe Covid symptoms.

What I can't do, according to my docs, is to go into a classroom with unvaccinated students.

The university says that it can't implement a vaccine mandate legally because the shots haven't been FDA approved yet.

But other private colleges like Tulane have already made the shots.

A requirement for students outside of Louisiana.

Public colleges have been able to implement vaccine mandates, too.

A federal appeals court ruled that Indiana University could do just that.

Hi, I'm William Tate, president of LSU.

And I'm here to update you on our plans for the fall semester.

After reviewing recommendations from the medical advisory panel, a hearing and talking to many of you, we have decided that the protocols for the fall that will keep our classroom instruction environment safe and allow for maximal engagement in a traditional residential environment.

LSU is putting in some requirements.

The president, William Tate, released a video naming some of them.

Everyone is required to wear a mask indoors and within 50 feet of school buildings.

They're also requiring students to get a Covid test on a monthly basis.

Zeppos is still not convinced that these guidelines are enough.

As I read the letter, a students who are not vaccinated will be asked to undergo tests every month.

Well, my understanding is that you can go for a test one day and be negative and go for a test day or two later and be positive.

So I find no reassurance with that testing requirement.

If the petition is denied, Seppo says he's considering taking unpaid leave or just quitting his job altogether.

For persil, though, that decision isn't as easy.

She's come up with several solutions, teaching outside or teaching her class from another room.

But before she explores any of these options, she hopes the university has a change of heart.

The shutdown a year and a half ago now was traumatic for everybody.

And we all want to be back on campus.

You know, everybody wants that.

But not at the expense of our health and safety.

Today, LSU President William Tate told members of the Board of Supervisors that Lisu will not hesitate to impose the COVID 19 vaccine mandate once a vaccine is FDA approved.

Tate says he believes that will be not too long in coming.

Health officials say the unvaccinated population is largely responsible for this fourth surge.

But even people who are vaccinated can become infected.

Leaders say the vaccine is the answer and it is doing what it's supposed to do.

To guide Bostitch getting the vaccine, but getting back to normal, running businesses and meeting with people like he did before the pandemic.

But the shot in his arm didn't give the protection he was hoping to get.

Months later, in July, he felt the symptoms he'd been afraid of.

It was the Monday before I tested positive.

So about three weeks ago now, three weeks ago from yesterday, I woke up with a very slight sore throat and some nasal congestion.

But it really just felt like summertime allergies.

I have I'm really prone to allergies, has been raining a lot.

You have some mold and mildew could be in the air, but it wasn't allergies.

He test positive for Covid even after he got the shot.

He says it was a miserable feeling because he'd followed all the rules.

So guess who was fully vaccinated but got COVID 19.

Now, I know being fully vaccinated does not protect you 100 percent.

But I got it.

Foster documented some of his experience with the symptoms on Tick.

Tock revealed that he'd lost his sense of smell and talked about how hard it was to remain isolated.

Hey, guys.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

As you know, my other videos I have Covid.

I feel fine.

I mean, I can't taste or smell part of that.

I feel fine.

But this emotional side of it, my feelings are all over the place.

Fosdick would be labeled as a breakthrough case, and we're seeing more of them as the Delta variant numbers rise in Louisiana and Shreveport.

Jeremy Camille, a virologist with LSU Health, says that the more time people give the virus to mutate, the easier it'll be to get infected, vaccinated or not.

The virus is getting a lot of chances to innovate or come up with new solutions to become a little bit more transmissible to fuze its membrane with a human membrane more quickly, and also to find combinations of changes that don't hurt the virus.

But in fact, you know, if it was like if it was like the FBI had a picture of a terrorist or a criminal and the criminal put sunglasses on, dyed his hair blond and grew a mustache.

The virus is doing that, too.

So are your immune system recognizes if it's like a you know, takes it a little minute to come up and realize, oh, shoot, you know, this is the same thing that we fought off four months ago.

You see, the vaccine works by tricking your body into thinking it's actually infected.

It gets it ready to recognize a real threat when it emerges.

In this case, that threat will be COVID 19.

But when the virus mutates, it gets harder and harder for your body to see it for what it is, which gives the virus the chance to multiply and cause symptoms even while you're vaccinated.

These breakthrough cases are just an example of that.

But according to Camille, that doesn't mean your shots aren't working.

Good news is for most people, your T cells can come to your rescue if if the antibodies aren't a perfect match.

And the really cool thing is your immune system is dynamic.

It always is updating itself.

So you have these little CIA, FBI, police stations in your body called lymph nodes, and that's where your immune cells compare notes.

So they'll grab a virus that's making you sick and they'll take a chunk of dying cells and they'll bring it to the lymph node and they'll look, hey, this is the part that matches up.

This is the part that doesn't.

In simpler words, while you may be coughing and sniffling with Covid symptoms, your organs are still eliminating the virus by matching bits of information it got from the vaccine to the real threat in your body.

It's actually preventing you from experiencing the worst of Covid symptoms like serious breathing issues that could land.

You want to vent.

But that's not the case for everyone.

Some vaccinator people will still end up on a ventilator and some will still die.

It all comes down to the immune system.

If it's not as strong, your body may not form the antibodies.

It needs to neutralize the threat completely.

Those cases are rare in Louisiana, about 3000 vaccinated people have gotten the virus and a little over 150 have been hospitalized.

But each time another person gets the vaccine, it gives the virus less of an opportunity to mutate and gives people like false Volstead a fighting chance.

The breakthrough cases are relatively rare as more cases emerge, the likelihood of them spreading is high.

Researchers of the Baton Rouge General Hospital are studying whether a new at home nasal spray can prevent COVID 19.

As part of a phase two clinical trial run ologists Dr. Henry.

Bahram and his team are looking for people between the ages of 18 and 65 who have not had the virus.

I think one of the things that is really exciting to me is the importance of taste and smell research, which I realize is super nerdy.

Baton Rouge EMT radiologist Dr. Henry Bahram is as much without ego as it gets, especially when it comes to his groundbreaking research.

His peer reviewed, published taste test findings which determined Covid impact on those infected.

While vaccines remain the most important weapon against serious illness.

Researchers around the world are busy studying what else is effective.

Studies involving nasal sprays as a Covid weapon are now underway.

And as of this week, Bahram is heading a trial in tandem with the Baton Rouge General Hospital.

But basically, it's an already existing drug that is just using a different formulation of it.

But the beauty of this is that there's no real systemic absorption.

It's really a topical spray that you self administer at home directly in your nose.

It's just a nasal spray.

Looking specifically at the prevention of Cuban 19 or SARS-CoV-2.

It sounds like it's integrated into the work that you're doing with the receptors in the taste receptors.

So that's certainly why we got involved, was because of these receptors and study of them.

One of the interesting parts to this brand and with the with this family of receptors, there's actually several of them, like up to 25 known within this family.

And so there's multiple ones that can be used or stimulated that it actually has the potential to help a lot of people, because there's twenty five known of these receptors.

And so if you can broadly stimulate them, it could be more impactful across a much larger percentage of the population balms.

Discoveries about the role of receptors and overall health gave rise to an in-home test kit theno mune, which can inform people where they fit in the taste sensitivity scale and what that means for Covid and other respiratory illnesses.

What have you learned with the receptors since your research began and you began to see some of the results that you were seeing?

So we published a treatment protocol with Koven 19, and that's been that's been interesting that that study or, you know, those trials are certainly still going, which, you know, with this new variant have shown to to be incredibly important, because as you see all over the news, especially in Louisiana, we're being hit very hard with this variant.

And part of the problem is when you have a virus that is spreading so rapidly with severe symptoms, hospital capacity become such a big issue.

One of the things that you have done in your research and one of the things that you've had great results with is targeting the specific types or the range of illnesses and doing it proactively.

How much of that is being used to treat what's going on here?

Because that could only help.

It would only one be a feather in the cap for Louisiana that the nation could look at.

But has the state government, have they come to you and said, hey, let's take a look at this?

Has that branched out when it's right there in everyone's face?

While it's easy for me and for our research team and staff here to be on top of everything.

To making sure that protocols are performed appropriately.

Trying to do that in an accurate and precise way on a large scale presents issues and those are some of the things that we're working out now in hopes that we can do that.

Yeah, whether it be locally or statewide or depending on how effective it is on whatever level is needed in an effort to try to come back and combat the hospitalization and utilization of resources.

Here's more info on that taste test kit.

Go to the website Pheno Mune dot com and everyone that is our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch LPE be anytime, wherever you are with our LPW Web app.

You can catch LVB News and public affairs shows and other Louisiana programs that you've come to enjoy over the years.

And please like us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

For everyone here at Louisiana Public Broadcasting, I'm Andre Mauro.

Thanks for watching.

Until next time.

That's the state we're in.

Entergy is proud to support programing on LP and greener practices that preserve Louisiana.

The goal of our environmental and sustainability initiatives really is to ensure that our kids and future generations can be left with a cleaner planet.

Additional support provided by the Fred B. and Ruth B. Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting with support from viewers like you.