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BATON ROUGE, La. — LSU officials say they’ve been working with Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards on soon increasing attendance at outdoor athletic venues to 50%.

“We are excited about the opportunity to welcome more fans to our outdoor venues,” the university said in a written statement. “We will also undertake the task responsibly and in accordance with the SEC’s health and safety protocols, which will include mandatory and strictly-enforced mask wearing.”

Baseball is among the most popular spectator sports at LSU.

During the 2019 college baseball season, the last before the coronavirus pandemic, LSU set an NCAA record with 473,298 spectators attending 43 home games at Alex Box Stadium, which holds more than 11,000.

The announcement from LSU on Tuesday came as Edwards announced loosened “Phase 3” coronavirus rules for the state.

Louisiana’s daily average of new cases of COVID-19 over the past two weeks has fallen 21%, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Meanwhile, 14% of the state’s population has received at least the first dose of the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that have been available since December.