Avoyelles' Tuesday COVID update: 40 cases, one death

Omicron keeps hanging on, sickening dozens of Avoyelleans every day and inching the parish's COVID death toll ever closer to 200 victims.

The highly contagious variant, by most official counts, should be in retreat. For Avoyelles Parish, it is way past time for this bear to hibernate.

On Tuesday there were 40 new cases in the parish -- 35 first-time infections and five reinfections. There was one additional death.

As of Tuesday, Avoyelles' pandemic totals were 10,583 individuals infected with 756 suffering a reinfection at least 90 days after their first bout of the virus. That makes a total of 11,339 cases of COVID in the parish since the first one was reported on March 21, 2020. There have now beenn 191 COVID-related deaths in the parish since its first fatality on March 31, 2020.

The state's 22-month pandemic totals crossed two markers -- reaching 1.2 million infections and 16,016 deaths since March 2020.