Avoyelles Parish COVID risk drops from ‘high’ to ‘substantial’

For the first time this year, Avoyelles Parish’s risk level is not designated as “high” by the state health department. Most of the state is now colored cantaloupe orange, for “substantial risk,” instead of cherry red for high risk.

Although there were five days between updates due to no reports on Monday and Tuesday due to Mardi Gras, Avoyelles Parish had only six new cases of COVID during that period. There were only 520 tests reviewed in the parish for those five days.

The report is further cause to consider the Omicron wave to be an unpleasant memory. COVID is not defeated, but it is not on the march either.

There were five first-time infections in the five-day report and one reinfection.

PANDEMIC TOTALS

As of Wednesday, the parish’s pandemic totals were 11,548 total cases diagnosed involving 10,753 parish residents.

Of those, 7,270 were initially diagnosed with COVID by a lab test and 3,483 by rapid result tests. There had been 795 reinfections. The state does not indicate what type of test was used to identify a case of reinfection.

The parish death toll remained at 200, with 174 “confirmed” by lab tests and 26 deemed “probable” for COVID due to rapid result tests.

The state also released the parish’s official positive rate on Wednesday, showing that in the seven days of Feb. 17-23 the positive rate was 1.4 percent. That is a significant improvement over the 3 percent in the Feb. 10-16 period.

In the Wednesday-to-Wednesday analysis, looking at reports from Feb. 23 to March 2, Avoyelles Parish had 974 tests reviewed. There were 17 total new cases — 15 first-time infections and two reinfections. There were no additional deaths during that period.