After months of encouraging people not to gather in large groups because of the novel coronavirus, state and Baton Rouge officials are tweaking their messages as residents gather to protest police brutality.
Spokesman Mark Armstrong says Mayor Sharon Weston Broome’s administration is encouraging everyone, including protestors, to get tested for COVID-19 if they feel sick, participate in the contact tracing program, to practice good hygiene and to wear a mask.
“We support people voicing their opinion about the events happening,” Armstrong says of the local protests, which began Sunday downtown and have occurred nearly every day since.
The administration does not anticipate a spike in COVID-19 cases from the protests, though Armstrong says increased testing communitywide could lead to higher case counts.
Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration also doesn’t expect the protests to accelerate the spread of COVID-19, according to Christina Stephens, deputy chief of staff for communications. But, she says the state’s contact tracing program is in place and if someone tests positive who has recently been at a large event, such as a demonstration, an epidemiologist would decide whether other participants need to be tested or watch for symptoms.
Officially, the administration recommends people avoid areas where they can’t distance themselves from others and to always wear masks.
“We need people to take all the mitigation measures to heart, and that includes at demonstrations,” Stephens says.
As Politico reports, some of the most prominent public health experts in America, like former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden, have spoken out this week in support of the protests, causing confusion for some who strictly followed social distancing guidelines in the spring.
“We should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, tweeted on Tuesday. “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”
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