BATON ROUGE- Gov. John Bel Edwards gave his daily news briefing at the LSU PMAC Friday afternoon where employees and physicians are manufacturing personal protective equipment to help fight the battle against COVID-19.

Gov. Edwards announced the opening of a new, rapid testing site at a Walgreens in Harvey. He said it is one of just seven in the country, giving accurate results within 5-13 minutes.

The Walgreens location is located at 1544 Manhattan Blvd. in Harvey, La.

In Baton Rouge, there are rapid testing locations being managed by Premier Health partnered with Our Lady of the Lake.  Click HERE for local rapid testing information. 

Patients are required to pre-register and can do so at walgreens.com/coronavirus. 

The governor also announced Louisiana's latest coronavirus case numbers as of Friday afternoon. There are 23,118 confirmed cases, 1,868 COVID patients in the hospital, and 363 patients on ventilators.

Gov. Edwards said this is encouraging as hospital patients have gone down by 46 from yesterday, and patients on ventilators have gone down by 43.