Avoyelles COVID report for Friday: 74 cases, two deaths, 13.1% one-day positive rate

Once again, there is more to the daily COVID update than the basic report of new cases and deaths might indicate. Avoyelles Parish added 74 cases to its 17-month total Friday. Sadly, it also increased its death toll by two.

It would be nice to be able to focus on the fact that the number of new cases on Friday was 43 fewer than on Thursday. Unfortunately, it must be noted that there were more than twice as many test results studied in the Thursday report. In short, if the positive rate for 562 tests had held steady for 1,000 tests, the parish would have been rocked with 131 cases.

On a slightly positive note, the online COVID Act Now organization's study of Avoyelles' current COVID status indicates the infection rate has slowed from over 1.4 to 1.2. That means that every five active COVID cases creates six new ones. Under the higher infection rate, five cases created seven new ones.

As of Friday, 39.3 percent of Avoyelles Parish residents had received at least one dose of a vaccine while 30.4 percent were fully vaccinated. This means almost 9 percent of the population has taken the first shot of the two-shot vaccine and is awaiting taking a second shot.

Avoyelles' pandemic totals on Friday were 5,880 cases and 138 deaths. The statewide totals were 649,915 cases and 11,918 deaths. The state's one day report for Friday showed 5,922 new cases and 67 deaths.