NEW ORLEANS. Jeremy Stevenson didn’t know if he could make it this year.
Typically, Mr. Stevenson, chief of the Indian Mardi Gras tradition in New Orleans, spends a year tailoring an elaborate costume that pays homage to the Indian tribes that hosted people who had escaped slavery.
But after the devastating coronavirus surge in the city after Mardi Gras in 2020 and the Covid-related death of his cousin Kilian Boyd last year at age 37, Stevenson could barely look at the beads and feathers he needed to make this year’s costume.
Then, last spring, he heard his cousin’s voice telling him, “You must do it.” He began spending long days sewing, keeping an eye on the Covid-19 case count, fearful of any rise that could prompt the city to close and cancel Mardi Gras again.
And just after noon on Tuesday, as the members of his tribe, the Monogram Hunters, were shaking tambourines and beating drums, Mr. Stevenson came out of a corner building in the city’s Treme district wearing a five-foot crown with five arrows of bright pink feathers framing his head, and a sequined suit in light green, purple, blue and white, embellished with chandelier crystals, shimmering silver brooches and oval glass prisms.
“What you see in this costume shining like jewels is from the spirit of Dump floating in me,” he said, using Mr. Boyd’s nickname and holding back tears.
Across New Orleans, in a combination of joy, defiance, awe and celebration, Mardi Gras returned on Tuesday, watching with one eye the pain of the last two years in a city hit particularly hard by the pandemic, and with the other looking forward to bombast. , parade and move on.
Last year, all carnival parades were canceled and the celebrations were reduced to small gatherings in one house and decorated porches known as “house floats”. But this month, New Orleans’ carnival celebrations are back in full swing, raising hopes for the city’s rebirth after the devastating toll from the pandemic.
Mary Beth Romig, a spokeswoman for New Orleans & Company, the city’s tourism association, was hesitant to estimate the city’s total number of visitors, but said the parade routes are packed every day. “It’s like they missed it, people are really demanding it and itching to be there again,” Ms Romig said. The city usually sees a million people joining the festivities. Hotels said bookings are approaching pre-pandemic levels.
The celebration comes as the number of Covid-19 hospitalizations continues to fall after a spike caused by Omicron in January. The number of hospitalizations dropped to 586 from over 3,000 in August.
It’s too early to tell if this trend will continue: if hospitalizations increase due to Mardi Gras celebrations, it won’t be evident for at least a week, said Thomas LaVeist, dean of Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. .
However, Professor LaVeist believed that this event could serve as a “major test” with consequences far beyond New Orleans. “This will give us all a good idea of what life with Covid could look like – within the new normal,” Professor LaVeist said, adding that he attended one small parade with caution and always wore a medical mask.
For weeks, the city hummed with the familiar sights and sounds of Carnival. Crowds, mostly tourists wearing plastic Mardi Gras beads, crowded the eight-block stretch of Bourbon Street lined with bars, restaurants and strip clubs. The bartenders poured liters of rainbow daiquiri into plastic cups. From balconies overhead, people tossed beads into waiting hands. Music venues in the French Quarter, such as the Preservation Hall, sold out tickets for several shows a day.
The city seemed to have managed to forget about Covid-19.
But below the surface, the effects of the pandemic were intertwined in every part of the sprawling celebration. Craft stores have struggled to find safety pins, feathers, satin rolls and boxes of glue from wholesalers hit by back-up supply chains. Artists and musicians have created spectacular carnival masterpieces dedicated to loved ones lost due to the coronavirus.
And not everyone was sure that the fight was worth it.
“I think people were willing to take the risk of having a Mardi Gras if they could pay their bills,” said Angela Chalk, a New Orleans native who runs a local environmental nonprofit and has a background in public health, noting economic benefits from tourism after a financial hit of two long years. “But give us three weeks. Then we’ll know if the risk was worth it.”
At City Hall, health officials redoubled their efforts to enforce rules, put in place additional levels of monitoring, and expand testing.
Dr. Jennifer Avegno, director of the department, said she spent almost a year consulting with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and national public health experts, hoping to answer one question: “If we have Mardi Gras, how can we make to be sure that this is not the tragedy that was? — referring to 2020, when the city became an early pandemic hotspot after the coronavirus spread uncontrollably among unconscious huge crowds.
“Two years ago, Mardi Gras was like free publicity for a microbe,” said Glen David Andrews, a jazz trombonist. He remembered the near-constant sound of sirens as ambulances took people to hospitals, which were soon filled to capacity. Mortality in the city has reached the highest per capita level in the country.
“Almost everyone I knew was mourning someone,” said Mr. Andrews, who frequently showed up outside funeral services to play a solo version of “Just a Closer Walk With Thee” as caskets were carried for dead musicians, family members and friends. hearses.
To limit the spread of the virus this carnival season, Mayor LaToya Cantrell reinstated strict mitigation measures in January, including mandatory mask use indoors and a requirement that anyone eating, drinking or watching a performance indoors must show proof of vaccination. or recent negative coronavirus. test. Kreve members who rode floats or attended balls were required to present similar evidence to their captains.
Dr. Avegno and her staff handed out 20,000 home testing kits while walking through the parades. A kiosk at the baggage claim counter at the New Orleans airport offered vaccines and tests to arriving visitors. And earlier this month, the city implemented wastewater monitoring at two of its wastewater treatment plants, allowing any increase in overall levels of the virus to be tracked.
Both Dr. Avegno and Prof. LaVeist agree that the number of cases is likely to rise as crowds fill city streets, hotels, restaurants and bars.
Yet despite fears and grief over the virus — or perhaps because of it — the crowds seemed happier than ever as they marched down the St. Charles Avenue route in the parades leading up to Mardi Gras Day.
At Preservation Hall this month, managing director Mike Martinowicz, 52, said he’s felt “guttural enthusiasm” from performers at recent shows, many of whom haven’t been able to play indoors in front of a crowd for almost two years.
At midnight Tuesday, the party on Bourbon Street will conclude with mounted officers of the New Orleans Police Department, six horses wide, who each year ceremoniously ride down the street, escorted by the mayor on foot with a phalanx of policemen.
But for the city’s health department, Mardi Gras won’t end until all the data is collected. The next morning, Ash Wednesday, all city testing sites will be open and staffed.
“We want people to be able to get tested as soon as they feel a runny nose,” Dr. Avegno said, adding: “We expect a surge in cases, but unless it is significant, the impact on our hospitals will be manageable. And that’s what we hope for.”