Avoyelles COVID positive rate jumps from 3.2 to 6.7

Daily updates in late May told a tale of a rising positive rate in Avoyelles Parish's COVID tests. Simply put, a larger percentage of those taking a COVID test actually had COVID.

When the state released its official positive rate for the seven-day period of May 20-26 Wednesday evening, sure enough the parish's positive rate had jumped. In fact, it more than doubled from the 3.2 percent rate for May 13-19 to 6.7 percent. In the nine-parish Avoyelles neighborhood, Only Concordia at 10.1 and West Feliciana with 7.5 percent have a higher positive rate than Avoyelles.

Back in the depths of the pandemic, when there were thousands of tests per week and hundreds of new cases per week, a positive rate over 5 percent was considered an indicator of a persistent presence of COVID in the community. Now, with only a few hundred tests per week yielding one or two dozen positive results, it may just mean that the only people being tested are those who either "know" they have COVID or have reason to strongly suspect they might have been infected. Those who are just curious can now buy an at-home test to satisfy that curiosity. Those who don't want to think about the risk have taken, or certainly can take, a vaccination to resolve any questions.

The state's Wednesday update was delayed until about 6 p.m., so those results were not available for the Friday newspaper and were not posted on this website.

For the two days of Wednesday and Thursday, Avoyelles had 452 tests with eight positives -- meaning it was on one of those downward slopes of its COVID rollercoaster. Of those results, there were six positives out of 413 lab tests and two out of only 39 rapid result tests reviewed during those two days. That is an overall positive rate of 1.7 and a lab test positive rate -- which is used for the official number -- of 1.4 percent.

As of Thursday, Avoyelles' pandemic totals were 4,306 cases (3,742/564) and 123 deaths (115/8).