Midweek COVID update for Avoyelles: 49 cases, 4 deaths, 505 tests

The COVID update giveth and the COVID update taketh away.

Just as Tuesday's 4-day report gave Avoyelles Parish hope that the 4th Wave was ebbing, with an average of 10 per day for the long Labor Day weekend, Wednesday's update from the state health department was a brutal reminder that Delta hasn't packed up its bags and left just yet.

There were 49 new cases of COVID in only 505 test results. The 2.8 percent positive report in the four-day update with 1,412 tests ballooned to 9,7 percent in the one-day midweek update.

Worse than that, the report brought grim news of four additional COVID-related deaths in the parish, raising the death toll to 153 since the first fatality was reported in late March 2020.

The Wednesday news from the state wasn't all bad. The parish's official positive rate dropped by almost 2 points, from 11.2 for the seven days of Aug. 19 to Aug. 25 to 9.3 percent for Aug. 26 to Sept. 1. That rate looks at only the positives among the lab tests and does not include positives in rapid result antigen, which usually contain a higher rate of positive results than the lab tests.

As of Wednesday, Avoyelles Parish's pandemic totals were 6,599 cases and 153 deaths. The state totals were 705,490 cases and 12,915 deaths. The number of COVID victims in hospitals dropped to 1,895 with 378 on ventilators. The state's one-day totals were 3,066 cases and 136 deaths.