While overall COVID hospitalizations in Louisiana dropped since Friday, the situation in the Baton Rouge area continues to get worse. The region is now below 10% of its ICU capacity available. The 19 ICU beds available are about what would normally be available at OLOL alone

On the other hand, hospital capacity is looking better in both the Lake Charles and Lafayette areas. Both those regions have had alarmingly low capacity in recent weeks but seem to have freed up some beds.

A few things are complicating the picture of where we’re heading (delayed test results and wonky weekend reporting mainly), but key metrics of new cases and pct positivity are about where they’ve been when you factor in no reporting yesterday. Deaths continue to climb, however.

Regarding deaths: seems clear that while deaths have been rising recently this past week was the beginning of a steeper climb. Sadly, that’s an expected consequence of the rise in cases in late June/early July. Unless the case numbers fall, higher number of deaths will follow

Probably less of a pessimistic take overall than @Crimealytics was promising from this thread. Overall, some very concerning signs about Baton Rouge area hospital capacity and the death toll but not a lot of signs that cases are still on a sharp upward trajectory.