State reduces COVID death count by one; Tuesday update shows 4 new cases in 107 tests

Avoyelles Parish's COVID pandemic death toll was reduced by one Tuesday when the state removed a victim that had been incorrectly listed as an Avoyelles Parish fatality. That individual had been diagnosed with COVID using a rapid result test. As of Tuesday, the parish's COVID death total was 181 with 163 confirmed by lab tests and 18 diagnosed with rapid result tests.

The Tuesday update from the state health department reviewed 107 tests with four new COVID cases. While that overall positive rate of 3.7 percent is higher than the parish would like to see or is used to seeing in the past month or so, most of the tests and new cases are in the rapid result tests, which are not used in determining the parish's official positive rate. That rate is currently 0.2 percent. The one-day positive rate snapshot is 0.6. The rapid result positive rate is 4.1 percent.

As of Tuesday Avoyelles Parish had 7,403 cases of COVID since the pandemic began in March 2020.

The statewide pandemic totals on Tuesday were 744,181 cases and 14,844 deaths over the past 20 months.