Coronavirus

• Gov. John Bel Edwards is holding a news conference today at 2:30 p.m. to discuss the spread of COVID-19 in Louisiana. Watch the...

• Louisiana reported 1,179 new COVID-19 cases and fewer hospitalizations today as the trajectory of infection continued to plateau or decline following a summer...

• Gov. John Bel Edwards said Tuesday that more than 1.5 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted in Louisiana.   • Thousands of commercial mortgage borrowers...

With the COVID-19 pandemic, related financial and social issues, ongoing news coverage of nationwide civil unrest and a presidential election on the horizon, 2020...

The state treasury department will send out the first round of checks Wednesday for Louisiana’s Main Street Recovery Grant program, benefitting the smallest of...

• Louisiana reported 26 more COVID-19 deaths today, but new cases and hospitalizations continued their recent trajectory downward. Cases appear to have plateaued statewide...

The Baton Rouge Area Chamber today released its latest COVID-19 economic indicator dashboard that examines and assesses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on...

• Gov. John Bel Edwards is expected to give an update on the state’s coronavirus response at 2:30 p.m. Watch the presentation here.  • The...

Baton Rouge-based Walk-On’s Bistreaux & Bar is bucking state and national trends, opening new restaurants across the Southeast at a pace that is surprisingly rapid. 

Top decision makers in the Southeastern Conference are reportedly holding an impromptu meeting this afternoon to discuss the future of the 2020 football season,...

Incoming freshmen at LSU will move into their dorms starting Wednesday and many are concerned the university’s measures for preventing COVID-19 outbreaks are not strict enough to contain the virus, possibly causing LSU to shut down early again. New policies for residents include no guests, mandatory mask use outside of dorms and showers, increased cleaning for shared spaces and procedures for infected residents and their roommates to quarantine.

• The Louisiana Department of Health said today’s data on COVID-19 cases is likely incomplete as the state reported 562 new cases. The agency...

Despite the economic hardships created by the pandemic, bankruptcy filings so far this year, both locally and statewide, are significantly lower than they’ve been...

• This week is incredibly crucial in finalizing whether the Southeastern Conference will continue with the 2020-2021 football season after commissioners of the Power...

Though teachers, parents and some students fear the reopening of schools with in-person learning will rapidly spread COVID-19, state officials and health experts maintain...

• Louisiana is reporting 1,601 new COVID-19 cases today and 61 new deaths, WBRZ-TV reports. • Cinemark is set to open more of its movie...

LSU’s Panhellenic Council announced last week via Instagram post that recruitment week for the sororities, Aug. 16-24, will be fully virtual due to the...

• The U.S. added 1.8 million jobs in July, a pullback from the gains of May and June. Even counting the hiring of the...

While the coronavirus pandemic has done damage to many sectors of the economy, it hasn’t had a negative effect on residential real estate, at least not yet. On the contrary, home sale activity in East Baton Rouge Parish through July is slightly higher than it was for the same period in 2019 or 2018, according to an analysis of MLS data compiled by the Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors and provided by local real estate agents.

In a meeting this morning of the Louisiana Economic Recovery Task Force, Dr. Stephen Barnes, an economist at UL-Lafayette and a member of the state’s Revenue Estimating Conference, said data suggests the economic downturn will last longer and be harder to recover from than originally thought. “While we had initially hoped this would be a much shorter event, as time passes more and more permanent damage is being done,” Barnes said. “That is going to give you a recovery path that might look more and more like the Great Recession did than the recovery after an event like Katrina.”