Governor John Bel Edwards today announced that Louisiana moving to Phase 1 of the White House guidelines for opening America during the COVID-19 pandemic. Edwards spoke this afternoon saying, “After reviewing the data and discussing it with health officials, we are going to move to Phase 1 on Friday, May 15th.”

The next Governor’s Proclamation will be issued on Thursday to take effect on Friday. Edwards said it will last until June 15th. Edwards said, “Although we will lift the Stay at Home order on Friday, until that time it is still in effect. We are trying to strike the right balance between concern for public health and getting More businesses open.”

“The other requirement in moving to Phase 1,” said Edwards, “is based upon testing and contact tracing. We are getting more testing capacity and we will get up to 200,000 tests per month in the state. And we are also expanding the contact tracing capacity.”

Today’s figures from the Louisiana Department of Health indicate that there have not been any new cases of COVID-19 reported in Winn Parish in the last day. There have been 52 cases reported and there have been 2 deaths recorded so far.