New Orleans Hosts Its 1St Full-Dress Mardi Gras Since 2020

People are out to party as New Orleans’ first full-dress Mardi Gras since 2020 dawns Tuesday, with a day of back-to-back parades through the city and masks against COVID-19 required only in indoor public spaces.

Parade routes are shorter than usual, because there aren’t enough police for the standard ones, even with officers working 12-hour shifts as they always do on Mardi Gras and the end of the Carnival season leading up to it.

But with COVID-19 hospitalizations and case numbers falling worldwide and 92% of the city’s adults at least partly vaccinated, parades are back on after a season without them.

And people are out and ready to let the good times roll.

The crowd Sunday, when the huge Krewe of Bacchus paraded, “was a record for us in the 10 years we’ve been open,” said Thomas Houston, bar manager at Superior Seafood and Oyster Bar, located at the start of the truncated parade route.

He expected similar crowds on Fat Tuesday — a state holiday — if the weather is good. Not to mention Ash Wednesday, when people following the Catholic tradition of meatless Lenten fare are out for seafood.

“It’s not just a fun money-making time but you get to see people who’ve been around for 10 years,” he said.

Hotel occupancy, though, is expected to be about 66%, down about 19.5% from 2020, said Kelly Schultz, spokesperson for New Orleans & Co., the official sales and marketing organization for New Orleans’ tourism industry.

Parades were canceled last year because officials realized that tightly packed crowds in 2020 had created a superspreader event, making the city an early Southern hot spot for COVID-19.

But “2020 was weird,” Houston said, because two people were hit by floats and killed in the week leading up to Mardi Gras and the mayor suspended use of multiple floats hitched behind one tractor.

“Also the coronavirus was sort of looming over us,” even though its presence wasn’t yet known in New Orleans, Houston said.

As it has for years, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club will open Fat Tuesday with a parade that started as a mockery of white festivities, with Black float riders in blackface and grass skirts.

Next come the elaborate and fantastical floats of Rex, the self-styled king of Carnival, chosen by a group of high society, old-money businessmen.

After that are the Krewe of Elks and the Krewe of Orleans, a not-quite-endless stretch of homemade floats on long flatbed trailers.

As Mardi Gras Nears, New Orleans Brings Back Mask Mandate

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — New Orleans will reinstitute an indoor mask mandate to fight the spread of COVID-19 while readying for an influx of visitors for the Mardi Gras season, the city health director said Tuesday.

Dr. Jennifer Avegno said the mandate takes effect Wednesday at 6 a.m. and will apply to participants in the annual Mardi Gras balls that take place in the city.

Avegno said Louisiana’s statewide coronavirus daily hospitalization numbers have grown in three weeks “by a factor of seven.” She said those cases have put a strain on hospitals, with emergency room waits as long as 12 hours in some facilities.

Growing numbers of coronavirus cases, driven by the omicron variant can affect treatment for people seeking treatment for other illnesses or injuries, Avegno said.

And, while Avegno said she’s hoping cases will subside in coming weeks, she added hospitalizations and deaths show up weeks after cases are reported. That could mean continued pressure from coronavirus cases about the time emergency rooms face an annua uptick in patient numbers as Mardi Gras nears and tourists, some of them overindulging in alcohol, flood the city.

Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, falls on March 1 this year. Major parades, which draw as many as a million locals and visitors to city streets, begin in the last two weeks of February.

The city already has a requirement that people show proof of vaccinations or negative tests for entry into bars, restaurants and numerous other venues.

Mardi Gras in 2020 became what officials later realized was an early Southern superspreader of COVID-19. Festivities were largely canceled last year. This year, officials are determined to proceed with Mardi Gras events, while enforcing vaccine and testing requirements.

The state health department said Tuesday that just over 1,900 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Louisiana as of Monday, up from about 200 in mid-December.

New Orleans To Shut Down Bars During Mardi Gras Weekend

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — New Orleans bars will be shut down, even for takeout service, throughout next week’s Mardi Gras weekend — usually among their busiest times of the year — in an attempt to slow the spread of coronavirus, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said Friday.

Many bars already were closed to indoor service. Cantrell’s Friday announcement means they won’t be able to sell drinks to go — a popular option year-round and especially during Mardi Gras. And, she said the city is expanding the closure order to include bars that have “conditional” food permits that allowed them to operate as restaurants during various pandemic shutdowns.

Stepped up crowd control begins this weekend, Cantrell said. The bar shutdown begins next Friday and runs through Mardi Gras — also known as Fat Tuesday — on Feb. 16.

Cantrell and other city officials at Friday’s news conference said businesses that violate the rules face on-the-spot shutdowns and loss of licenses.

And they warned visitors to the city during what is one of the biggest tourism times of the year to adhere to safety precautions.

“If by chance you have an aversion to wearing a mask, stay where you’re at,” said City Council member Jay Banks, who said he knows 23 people who have died of COVID-19. “if your expectation is the Mardi Gras of the past, don’t waste your money.”

The city’s famous parades, which would ordinarily begin rolling this weekend, had already been cancelled.

Cantrell also announced restrictions on pedestrian and automobile traffic on Bourbon Street and other streets in the French Quarter that are usually bustling with shoulder-to-shoulder crowds during the Mardi Gras weekend. And she said fences will be erected along a street corridor outside the Quarter where crowds often gather on Fat Tuesday.