Avoyelles has 41 new COVID cases out of 417 tests in weekend update

If there was a doubt that Avoyelles Parish was part of a statewide "wave" of COVID-19 -- or a hope that it wasn't -- the weekend update from the state health department all but squelched both.

Since the Friday report, the state read 417 COVID tests in Avoyelles, revealing 41 new cases. Thankfully, there were no additional deaths from the virus in that report. For the three-day report, that averages almost 14 cases per day. That represents an overall positive rate of 9.8 percent. The positive rate for lab tests -- used by the state to determine a parish's official weekly positive rate -- is almost 7 percent, 25 out of 361 tests.

From last Monday (July 19) to today (July 26), Avoyelles had one of the worst seven days in its recent pandemic history. With 1,691 tests reviewed, the parish had 95 positive results. It also had two additional deaths during that week.

The state had 20,503 new cases from Monday to Monday with 73 deaths during the week.

As of today, Avoyelles' 16-month totals are 4,569 diagnosed infections with 127 deaths connected to the virus. The state has had 520,435 cases and 10,914 deaths. Statewide there are 1,221 hospitalized with COVID and 113 of those are on ventilators. Not to be pessimistic or macabre, but those numbers indicate the state's death toll will top 11,000 within a week, two tops. Avoyelles' next "benchmarks" would be 4,600 cases and 130 deaths. Those, too, could be only a week away unless the current spike reverses.

The state updated Avoyelles Parish's vaccination numbers Monday, showing the Crossroads Parish with 29.17 percent of its residents fully immunized against COVID and just over 33 percent having taken at least one dose of the vaccine. That compares to approximately 41 percent statewide, ranking Avoyelles 38th out of the 64 parishes in percent of population that is at least partially protected against the virus.