Thursday COVID report: Another death, 12 new cases

It was more of the same for Avoyelles Parish when the Thursday COVID report was issued: 12 new cases, another death, overall one-day positive rate of over 5 percent -- approximately where the state put the parish's official weekly positive rate of 4.9 percent based on last week's figures.

On top of that, there are reports from readers of friends and family being hospitalized from the virus. One call reported an elderly man and wife were both hospitalized with COVID-related pneumonia.

Avoyelles vaccination rate still trails most of that state, including most of its eight neighbors. In the figures updated today, the state reports 29.05 percent of Avoyelles' population has been fully vaccinated. That is better than Catahoula (23.04), LaSalle (24.28) and Concordia (25.11), just behind Evangeline (29.38), Rapides (31.68) and St. Landry (32.53) but way behind our trans-Atchafalaya neighbors of Pointe Coupee (40.41) and West Feliciana (50.29).

As of Thursday, the parish pandemic totals were 4,519 cases and 127 deaths. The state's totals were 509,716 cases and 10,889 deaths.

To get another perspective on the status of Avoyelles war with COVID, the online COVID Act Now released an updated analysis on Thursday rating Avoyelles as "very high risk" with 25.3 new cases per day per 100,000 population, an infection rate of 1.19, a positive rate over the past seven days of 5.5 percent and with 32.6 percent of its population having taken at least one dose of vaccine.

It isn't much comfort to note that many other parishes in the state are faring far worse. It's like two fishermen whose boats are sinking, but one counts himself better off because the other boat is sinking faster.

As of Thursday, Avoyelles, which ranks 28th in population out of the 64 parishes, was 47th in cases per day per 100,000 population, 50th in infection rate, 55th in positive rate and 37th in percent of population with at least one dose of vaccine.

Statewide, there have been 32.5 new cases per day per 100,000 population, an infection rate of 1.34, an 11 percent positive rate and 40.1 percent of residents have taken at least one dose of vaccine.

Optimists hope this is a blip in the COVID radar and the daily updates will soon return to one or two cases a day and no more than a death per month. Another week like the past one and optimists may be as scarce as panthers and red wolves in the Avoyelles woods.