For Avoyelles, low test number = high positive rate

It was another day where only a few new COVID cases was enough to give Avoyelles Parish a high positive rate for the one-day report Friday.

The Louisiana Department of Health's noon update reported Avoyelles had three new cases since the Thursday report, but that was out of only 34 tests -- a snapshot positivity picture of 8.8 percent in the parish. Statewide the one-day positive rate among tests was 3.6 percent.

So far this week the one-day reports on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were also well above 5 percent while Thursday's report, with almost as many tests as the other three days combined, was 2.9 percent.

Combining the results of the five weekday reports, the parish had a five-day positive rate of almost 7 percent.

The parish's pandemic totals as of Friday were 1,757 cases, 62 deaths and 28,712 tests. The state's totals were 182,270 cases, 5,705 deaths and 2,759,292 tests. Nationwide there have been 8.9 million cases and 228,000 deaths, with infection rates rising in most states. Worldwide there have been 45 million infected with almost 1.2 million fatalities.