NEW ORLEANS — Coronavirus-related limits on access to Bourbon Street, shuttered bars and frigid weather all prevented what New Orleans usually craves at the end of Mardi Gras season — streets and businesses jam-packed with revelers.

Parades and parties on Fat Tuesday and the days leading up to the annual pre-Lenten bash usually draw more than a million people to the streets.

But traffic was light on St. Charles Ave., ordinarily blocked off as a parade route. The median that usually is a sea of picnickers and parade watchers was empty but for an occasional bundled-up jogger.

Downtown Canal Street also was all but empty. The French Quarter’s Bourbon Street, where Mardi Gras crowds are usually the most crowded and rowdy, was blocked off by police barricades at the end of each block.

Bars were closed. Police were told that only people who lived or worked in the area or were staying in hotel could go on Bourbon Street.

Michael Bill was getting a fast-food breakfast from a takeout window just off Canal Street at the edge of the French Quarter. He surveyed the empty street.

“The cold doesn’t bother anyone. It’s the COVID,” Bill said. He said he has been a ghost tour guide for 10 years but was furloughed because of business slowed by the coronavirus pandemic.

He didn’t blame New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell for the restrictions that canceled parades and have shuttered many businesses.

“The mayor’s doing the best she can,” Bill said.

Cantrell recently ordered bars closed. Even bars that had been allowed to operate as restaurants with “conditional” food permits were shuttered for five days that began Friday. Take-out drinks in “go-cups” also are forbidden — no more strolling the French Quarter with a drink in hand.