Wednesday COVID update for Avoyelles: weekly positive rate drops to 3.8%; 51 new cases out of 533 tests for 9.6% one-day rate
Some stores hold "Christmas in July" sales. Well, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas -- but not in a good way.
First there's the almost solid red map, designating all but two parishes as "highest risk" for COVID.
On Dec. 23 the state had 3,134 new cases of COVID-19. On Wednesday the state reported 4,699 new cases. On Dec. 25 there were 1,540 COVID patients in Louisiana hospitals with 197 on ventilators. On Wednesday there were 1,524 hospitalized with 144 on ventilators.
Avoyelles Parish had some good news in the Louisiana Department of Health update, which reported the parish's official COVID positive rate had dropped from 4.8 percent to 3.8 percent for the period of July 15-21. Unfortunately, that news of what was happening a week ago was eclipsed by what happened in the past 24 hours.
The parish had 51 new cases of COVID since the Tuesday report was released. There were no additional deaths, so the day was not as dark as it could have been.
The Wednesday COVID update for the parish reviewed results from 531 tests, reflecting a one-day snapshot of 9.6 percent positive. Of those results, there were 47 new COVID cases out of 488 lab tests for a one-day positive rate of 9.8 percent and four out of 48 rapid result tests for a rate of 9.3 percent.
As the "Delta wave" has reached Avoyelles Parish, the number of tests have increased. Health officials say that is a good thing because it provides a better understanding of the presence of COVID in the community. However, with the increase in tests comes an increase in cases.
Avoyelles' pandemic totals from March 20, 2020 to today show 4,638 diagnosed cases of COVID-19 with 127 deaths. Of those, 3,948 cases and 118 fatalities were confirmed by molecular lab tests and 690 cases and 9 deaths were diagnosed with a rapid result test and officially classified as "probable for COVID."
The state totals for the 16-month pandemic are 531,952 cases and 10,948 deaths. .