Study Finds That Last Year's Mardi Gras Led To 50,000 COVID Cases

A new study found that last year's Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans was a super spreader event that resulted in at least 50,000 cases of COVID-19. Over one million people traveled to New Orleans in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, weeks before social distancing and mask mandates were implemented in cities and states across the country.

Researchers believe the first case of COVID-19 was brought to the state by a traveler from Texas about two weeks before Mardi Gras kicked off. By the time the celebrations came to a close on Ash Wednesday, at least 800 people had contracted the coronavirus. When those people left New Orleans, they brought the virus with them and helped fuel the outbreak within Louisana and neighboring states.

“In March, I think New Orleans had the sharpest increase of patients anywhere in the world,” Mark Zeller, study author and a researcher at Scripps, said, according to the New Orleans Advocate. “If Mardi Gras would have been two, three weeks earlier, maybe it wouldn’t have resulted in this many cases."

In the following months, the virus ravaged the state, resulting in New Orleans reporting some of the highest numbers of deaths per capita in the U.S.

“The entire outbreak in Louisiana is almost certainly fueled by what happened on Mardi Gras,” Zeller said. “It’s basically the snowball. Once it’s going, it’s just going. It’s really hard to stop.”

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