Avoyelles has 211 new cases over long MLK weekend

A 4-day weekend in the middle of a major COVID surge had many virus watchers dreading the Tuesday update from the state Health Department.

For Avoyelles Parish, it wasn't as bad as was feared.

The Crossroads Parish still had 211 new cases, but based on the Friday report that showed daily averages that high, 211 over four days is considered a win -- unless the numbers are artificially low because people testing positive on at-home rapid tests decided to keep the results to themselves. That possibility has been floated as a possible downside to the current at-home test emphasis.

The parish had its first death in several weeks, raising the death toll to 180. The parish's pandemic high death toll was 182 but three deaths were removed from the parish's totals. The number had stayed at 179 for several weeks. The total number of infections in Avoyelles since March 2020 is 9,224 as of Tuesday.

Statewide the number of infections topped 1 million, to 1,025,748. There have been 15,195 COVID-related deaths. There were 29,125 cases and 58 deaths in the state during the four-day period of this update.

The Omicron surge will probably be remembered as the "rapid result" surge. Of the 1,487 tests reviewed for the Saturday-Tuesday period for Avoyelles Parish, 984 were lab tests and 503 were rapid result tests. For the entire pandemic, there have been 124,739 lab tests and 19,935 RRTs in the parish. In the Tuesday update, 106 of the 211 cases were identified by lab tests and 125 by rapid tests.

Those interested in "snapshot" positive rates will note that the Tuesday update drops Avoyelles' rate back to just above where it was when the spike hit last week, at almost 14 percent. That is less than half the rate of the state overall, which was about 31 percent for that four-day report.