Avoyelles has 12 new cases of COVID in Tuesday update

With Tuesday's COVID update, Avoyelles is now looking at two reports in a row with higher-than-comfortable positive rates reflected in double-digit increases in new cases.

On Monday, the state update included lab results for Saturday, Sunday and Monday. There were 107 molecular test results -- which are used to determine the parish's official weekly positive rate -- with 11 new cases of COVID. That is a positive rate of over 10 percent.

Is the rate high because there were so few tests, or does it accurately reflect the presence of COVID in the community?

There were 38 rapid result tests with just one positive, which is only 2.6 percent positive. The rapid result tests have a reputation for yielding higher positive rates than the more detailed lab tests. However, on Friday those tests lived up to their reputation when there were 12 positives out of only 49 tests -- a positive rate of 24 percent. The net number of new cases was kept to eight when the state removed four previous lab test positives from the parish's totals.

Tuesday's report showed 10 positives out of 153 lab tests, for a snapshot 6.5 percent one-day positive rate, and two positives out of three rapid results tests, a 66.6 percent rate in that very small sample.

The good news in the report is that there were no additional COVID-related deaths, leaving the death toll at 123 with 115 confirmed by lab tests and eight diagnosed with rapid result tests.

The parish's pandemic total as of Tuesday is 4,165 cases (3,648/517) and 123 deaths (115/8). The state's totals since March 2020 are 456,884 cases and 10,352 deaths.