In Louisiana, death comes before coronavirus test results

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Social worker Natasha Ott was feeling ill but declined a COVID-19 test earlier this month because her clinic, Crescent Care — which serves the HIV-positive community — only had five, and she wanted to save them for patients.

"They don't think I need to get tested unless I develop a fever," the 39-year-old texted her boyfriend, Josh Anderson. "All looks well."

Ott, a Claremont native who moved to New Orleans five years ago, was finally tested a week later, on March 16. She was told she would have to wait for the results. Anderson offered to bring her pho, but she said she didn't have an appetite. She was tired, and asked him to walk her dog, Zola.

Two days later, she texted: "I just don't understand why I don't feel much better yet." Two days after that, Anderson found her collapsed in her kitchen, dead.

“She died on the day she was supposed to get the results,” said family friend Carol Coalson, of San Diego, Ott's foster mother, who had just visited her last month to celebrate Mardi Gras.