Friday's COVID report for Avoyelles: fewer tests with fewer cases but higher positive rate

With about 230 fewer tests reviewed for Friday's COVID update from the Louisiana Department of Health, Avoyelles' number of new cases dropped below 100 -- but not too far below.

The only good news is that the death toll remained at 179. Even that could be considered "bad news" since the parish's number of deaths had been reduced by one in each of the previous two reports.

There were 92 new cases, evenly split between those identified by lab tests ("confirmed") and by rapid result tests ("probable"). There were 692 tests reviewed -- 534 lab tests and 158 RRTs.

The overall positive rate for this daily report was 13.3 percent. Statewide the Friday-only positive rate was 20.95. This maintains Avoyelles' "fifth wave" state as trending better than the state overall.

The state set another daily case increase record with 14,802 on Friday, breaking the old record of 14,077 set Thursday. That number pushed the state's pandemic case total over 900,000, to 908,428 since March 2020. There were 16 COVID-related deaths in the state in Friday's update, raising the death toll to 15,054.

Avoyelles almost 22-month totals are 8,188 infections with 179 fatalities.