New Orleans closes bars, bans takeout booze sales
NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans’ mayor is shutting down the city’s bars because of rising coronavirus numbers and is also forbidding restaurants to sell alcoholic drinks to go.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell said Friday that some lines of people waiting to buy drinks were so long they became “a gathering in themselves, and no mask-wearing and the like.”
Cantrell says the city is seeing daily increases in confirmed coronavirus cases about double its threshold of 50 a day for more relaxed rules. The rule against take-out sales of alcoholic drinks takes effect at 6 a.m. Saturday.
The mayor’s orders came as the Louisiana Department of Health reported more than 2,000 new confirmed coronavirus cases, for a total of 103,734. New Orleans’ total rose 103, to 9,752.