Thursday COVID update for Avoyelles: 1,197 tests, 117 cases, no deaths

Thursday was a "heavy" day for Avoyelles Parish's daily COVID update from the state health department. With almost 1,200 test results reviewed since Wednesday's report, the update noted 117 new cases but no additional COVID-related deaths. Except for a February report that include over 200 cases at the state prison in Cottonport, this is Avoyelles Parish's new one-day record for new cases.

The parish is now close to recording over 100,000 COVID tests and is likely to top 6,000 cases over the weekend for the 17-month pandemic.

The overall positive rate in this one-day report is almost 9.8 percent. That is lower than the one-day positive rate of 11.7 on Wednesday and 12.7 in the weekend report released Monday. Larger pools of tests usually yield lower positive rates even though they add higher numbers to the pandemic total.

As of Thursday, the parish had administered 99,085 tests that identified 5,806 cases with 136 deaths attributed to the virus. Statewide, there have been 9,011,285 tests administered with 643,993 positive for COVID. There have been 11,851 COVID-related deaths during the 17-month pandemic.