Avoyelles trails state in major COVID indicators

Avoyelles Parish had only four new cases of COVID out of 127 lab tests in Friday's report.from the state health department. There were no positive results out of the 21 rapid tests in the daily report.

While everyone can appreciate "four" is a low number, and so much better than the 40 or more the parish was having in the depth of the pandemic, COVID watchers look beyond the actual number to try to determine what it says about the presence of the virus in the community.

The three major indicators of success in a community's war on COVID are new cases per 100,000 per day, positive test results percentage and percent of population with at least one dose of vaccine.

While four out of 127 sounds good to us, it should be noted that using this report as a one-day snapshot of COVID in the community reflects a positive rate of 3.1 percent -- which is higher than the parish's current official weekly positive rate of 2.3 percent. Those who like to compare small communities with larger ones look at the "number of new cases per day per 100,000 population." With a population of approximately 40,000, each case represents 2.5 cases on a per 100,000 basis. That changes Friday's "four" into a statistical "10 per 100,000."

The online COVID Act Now organization's analysis of Avoyelles Parish's recent pandemic numbers has the parish rated "high risk" with 11 new cases per 100,000 per day and a positive rate of 3.2 percent. Act Now reports the state with 9.8 new cases per day per 100,000 people and a positive rate of 3.3 percent. In the vaccination campaign, 26.3 percent of Avoyelleans have received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine while 33.8 percent statewide have received at least one vaccination.

For those keeping score, Avoyelles trails the state in new cases per day and vaccination rate. It is just below the state positive rate.

Avoyelles' pandemic totals as of Friday were 4,226 cases (3,683 lab/543 rapid test) and 123 deaths (115 / 8). The state's numbers were 464,833 cases and 10,478 deaths.