Avoyelles Wednesday COVID update: 16 more cases, one more death

In one day, Avoyelles added 16 new cases and another COVID-related death to its nine-month totals since the pandemic began in March.

Today's report from the Louisiana Department of Health was evenly divided between new "confirmed" cases and "probable" cases of COVID in the parish. However, the eight "confirmed" cases were in a group of 75 molecular tests while the eight "probable" cases were identified in 30 rapid-results antigen tests.

As of Wednesday Avoyelles' totals were 2,524 cases (2,348 / 176) and 85 deaths (82 / 3). Statewide totals as of Wednesday are 293,934 cases (268,984 / 24,950) and 7,226 deaths (6,877 / 349).

The antigen tests, which have only been in wide use for the past few months of the pandemic, account for 3 percent of the parish's COVID tests but about 7 percent of positive results. There are two competing theories to explain that. One is that rapid tests are primarily given to those exhibiting symptoms who want to rule out COVID. Testing subjects with symptoms associated with COVID is more likely to produce more COVID-positive results. Another is that the rapid tests have a small false-positive rate. For that reason, the state does not include those results in determining a parish's weekly positive rate and classifies those results as "probable" for COVID.

Approximately 3.5 percent of the 85 deaths were patients diagnosed with COVID using a rapid results test. The death rate in the rapid test group is 1.7 percent and is almost 3.5 percent in the molecular test group. That could be because many of the deaths occurred earlier in the pandemic, before rapid tests were available. It could also be caused by false positives that increase the number of cases and thus reduce the percentage in the death rate.

The parish received one piece of what passes for "good news" under the current situation. The most recent seven-day positive rate, for Dec. 10-16, dropped from 6.5 percent the previous week to 5.8 percent.

The report for Dec. 17-23 will be released on Jan. 6.