Thursday COVID update for Avoyelles: 3 cases in 266 tests

Thursday was what has become a typical COVID report for Avoyelles Parish -- approximately 300 tests, a few new cases and no additional deaths.

This update included 266 test results with three new cases. The overall positive rate for the report was 1.1 percent. The positive rate for lab tests, which is what the state uses to determine the parish's official positive rate, was 0.9 percent. Both of those rates are higher than Avoyelles' latest official positive rate of 0.5 percent for the seven-day period of Nov. 18-24. The state's one-day positive rate for Thursday was 1.6 percent.

The parish's pandemic totals as of Thursday are 7,396 cases and 182 deaths. The state totals are 772,310 cases and 14,814 deaths.

Over the past 20 months, there have been 129,381 COVID tests -- lab and rapid result -- administered in Avoyelles Parish, which has approximately 40,000 residents. That population includes children who are not eligible for the vaccine. There have been 11.6 million tests in the state, which has a population of 4.6 million.

State health officials have said that while individuals may have multiple negative tests, there are no duplicate positive tests should a COVID victim take another test before he has recovered from the initial infection.