Avoyelles has 531 COVID cases in past two days

Avoyelles Parish had more new cases of COVID in the past two days than it had in the previous seven.

Friday's update from the Louisiana Department of Health contained the numbers for Thursday and Friday. The parish level statistics were not updated Thursday. In those two days, Avoyelles had 531 additional cases of COVID -- averaging over 265 per day. There were no additional COVID-related deaths in the parish.

For the Wednesday-to-Wednesday period of Jan. 5-12 the parish had 491 new cases and had actually lost one previously recorded death due to the victim being determined to be residing in another parish at the time of their death.

The parish's positive rate for the last two daily reports is 19.8 percent. That compares to the state's two-day positive rate of 20.6 percent, which could indicate Avoyelles is "catching up" to the rest of the state. In the Wednesday-to-Wednesday review, the state's positive rate was 13.6 percent while the state's was over 20 percent.

As of Friday, Avoyelles' almost 22-month totals are 9,013 infections with 179 fatalities. The state has had 996,623 cases and will almost certainly pass 1 million infections in the next report to be released Tuesday, which will include tests reviewed for four days. There have been 15,137 COVID-related deaths in the state during the pandemic.

It is not known how many of Avoyelles' cases are "reinfections" -- individuals who had COVID earlier in the pandemic and have been infected by the highly-contagious Omicron variant. The Health Department said 97 percent of new cases are caused by Omicron with the "fourth wave" variant Delta making up 3 percent. The state said 39,918 of the cases are reinfections and 2,083 of the Friday's 14,158 new cases are reinfections.

So far Omicron has lived up to its billing as a highly transmissible virus but causing much less severe cases and far fewer deaths than Delta. Health officials encourage those who have not been vaccinated to do so and for those who were vaccinated over six months ago to obtain a booster. Children as young as 5 are eligible for the immunization. They note that being vaccinated is not a 100 percent guarantee against infection, but that being vaccinated will result in a much milder illness.

The Health Department statistics show that from Dec. 30-Jan. 5, unvaccinated individuals accounted for 65 percent of new cases, 74 percent of hospitalizations and 66 percent of deaths.