Thursday COVID update: two more deaths

Thursday's update for Avoyelles Parish from the state health department involved more than four times more COVID test results than Wednesday's report, but had fewer positives. That could be seen as encouraging news or, more likely, as proof that daily "snapshots" are not a good indicator of the virus' strength and presence in a community.

Whatever brief optimism gained from a good report on new cases was swept away with the news that two more Avooyelleans have died from the disease.

The Thursday report showed 34 new diagnoses of COVID for the parish out of 444 tests. That is compared to 37 cases out of 107 tests on Wednesday. There were 28 cases confirmed by 412 molecular tests and six diagnosed by 32 quick-response antigen tests. The molecular tests had almost 6.8 percent positive and the antigen tests had just under a 19 percent positive rate. Antigen tests usually have a higher positive rate for two reasons -- they are usually given only to people exhibiting a symptom that could be associated with COVID, and not to asymptomatic individuals; and the test has been found to give some false positive results. Antigen results are not currently used in determining a parish's official weekly positive rate.

Avoyelles weekly positive rate dropped from 12 percent to 6.9 percent in Wednesday's report. The next update will be next Wednesday, for the seven-day period of Jan. 14-20.

As of Thursday, Avoyelles' pandemic totals were 3.296 cases (2,927 confirmed, 369 "probable") and 102 deaths (97/5).