Current statistics raise concerns about COVID status in Avoyelles

This report on Avoyelles Parish's fight against COVID will consist of some facts with no attempt to determine what, if anything, those facts mean.

First, in all truth the COVID conditions in Louisiana are getting worse. The red band of "high risk" parishes stretches across the top of the state from Mississippi almost to Texas.

In the 9-parish "Avoyelles Neighborhood," Concordia is "high risk" and LaSalle, Rapides, Evangeline, Pointe Coupee and West Feliciana are "substantial risk" parishes. Avoyelles, Catahoula and St. Landry are "moderate risk" parishes. In short, risk is rising around us.

Avoyelles Parish's official weekly positive rate rose again, from 1 percent for the seven-day period of Nov . 25-Dec. 1 to 1.2 percent for Dec. 2-8. This number reflects only the positive rate for lab tests and does not include rapid result tests, which usually have higher positive rates but are not considered to be as accurate as lab tests.

The Wednesday update from the state health department reviewed 155 COVID tests in Avoyelles with five new cases. That is a one-day positive rate of 3.2 percent. However, there was only one positive result in the 118 lab tests, which would be 0.8 percent. On the other hand, the four new cases diagnosed by the 37 rapid result tests is a surge-worthy 10.8 percent.

Prophets of the pandemic have been predicting since September there would be a winter wave. To spice up that bit of doom-and-gloom, the Omicron variant appears to be spreading in state. There have been no cases of that virus in this area. The latest research on Omicron, coming from Southern Africa where it was first identified and is now leading a surge of infections, the variant appears to be milder than Delta and previous versions of the virus but better at evading the vaccines currently being used. Those vaccines prevent hospitalization and death, but are not a complete shield against infection, the researchers said.

The parish's pandemic totals as of Wednesday are 7,433 cases with 181 fatalities. Statewide there have been 778,542 cases with 14,912 deaths since March 2020.