Wednesday COVID update for Avoyelles: 75 cases, one death

As the Delta variant of COVID runs rampant across the state, filling hospitals to capacity and sparking a wave of fear to serve as companion to the wave of infection, Avoyelles Parish was hit with another bad report in Wednesday's update from the Louisiana Department of Health.

The numbers were more in line with what would be expected, but were disheartening none the less. With 541 total tests reviewed, 75 were positive. There was also another COVID-related death.

What passes for good news these days is that there were "only" 32 new cases among 317 lab tests, for a 10.09 percent positive rate. That is "good" compared to Tuesday's report which had over 30 percent positive in the lab tests, which are used to determine a parish's official positive rate.

Rapid result tests accounted for 194 results and 43 positives with a rate of 22.16 percent.

The state updated the parish's official positive rate, which increased to 8.7 percent for the period of July 29-Aug. 4 from the 7.5 percent for the July 22-28 report.

The pandemic totals for Avoyelles as of Wednesday are 5,291 cases and 131 deaths. The state totals for the 17-month pandemic are 601,941 cases and 11,408 deaths. The Wednesday report showed 5,408 new cases and 55 deaths since Tuesday with 2,895 hospitalized and 373 on ventilators.