Avoyelles mid-week COVID update: 6 cases, no deaths, 229 tests

The midweek COVID update for Avoyelles Parish showed a slight uptick over recent one-day reports, with six new cases out of 229 tests reviewed. The 2.6 percent positive rate for that report is triple the parish's current official weekly positive rate of 0.8 percent. However, the state only considers molecular test results, which were 3 cases out of 166, which is 1.8 percent rate for the one-day report.

The official seven-day positive rate improved from 0.9 percent for Oct. 21-27 to 0.8 percent for Oct. 28-Nov. 3, which included over 200 previously unreported COVID cases.

The Nov. 1 "backlog" report that dumped 232 COVID cases into the parish's totals finally showed up in the state health department's assessment of the parish's risk, dropping Avoyelles back to "substantial" risk from a designation of "moderate." Avoyelles apparently had a large percentage of the 674 backlogged cases that were finally reported on Nov. 1. At least 225 of the Nov. 1 cases are believed to have been old results that had not been reported.

The new risk map puts Avoyelles, Pointe Coupee and St. Landry in the "substantial risk" designation and Avoyelles' other six neighboring parishes classified as "moderate risk."

As of Wednesday, the parish's pandemic totals were 7,349 cases and 181 deaths. Statewide totals were 763,628 cases and 14,662 deaths.