Avoyelles places 121 white flags at courthouse to remember those lost to COVID

With the one year anniversary of the first COVID death in Avoyelles, the courthouse square now has a vivid and somber reminder.

White is the symbol of innocence and purity. It is the color most often associated with doctors, nurses and hospitals.

When people see the 121 white flags near the Avoyelles Parish Courthouse flagpole, that is how they should remember the parish's victims of COVID-19 -- innocents who lost their lives in a war fought by men and women in white.

Far from being a "flag of surrender," the memorial flags also remind us that we are winning the victory over the disease that claimed its first Avoyelles life on March 31, 2020.

Police Jury President Kirby Roy said he was inspired to create the local memorial by the state's action to place flags at the Capitol.

"We ordered 150 flags," Roy said. "Hopefully we will not have to use them all."

Roy and courthouse personnel placed the flags one foot apart in the front of the courthouse. As another victim falls to the virus, their flag will join the others.

The parish's COVID numbers on that first anniversary of March 31 continued a trend showing less than 100 tests with very few new cases per day. Avoyelles' year-long pandemic totals showed 3,997 cases, with 3,496 "confirmed" by molecular lab tests and 501 rapid result test positives deemed "probable" for the virus. The COVID-19 death toll was at 121, with 112 "confirmed" and nine "probable" as related to the disease.

From March 24 to March 31, the parish had only 10 additional cases of COVID diagnosed with no additional deaths.

The low level of testing has apparently resulted in a slight uptick in the parish's weekly positive rate. With fewer people feeling at risk of infection, fewer are taking the precautionary tests intended to give health officials a better understanding of the virus' presence in a community.

As a result, a larger number of those being tested either have a symptom associated with the disease or reason to believe they have been exposed to someone with the disease. The result is a slight uptick in the percent of positive results in those tests.

The official weekly positive rate increased from 1.2 percent for March 11-17 to 3.3 percent for March 18-24.

WORLDWIDE UPDATE

COVID is currently in its "fourth wave" of activity, but fortunately it isn't happening here.

For much of the year-long global pandemic, America led the world in COVID-19 cases and
deaths. Louisiana was among the worst-hit states. Avoyelles was among the top tier of parishes on a per capita basis.

Now the nation, state and parish are leaders in the fight against the virus.

While nations that have engaged in aggressive immunization programs -- the U.S., Britain
and Israel, for example -- have significantly blunted the number of new cases, worldwide the persistent virus is gaining ground.

Overall, including the nations that are winning their war with the virus, COVID cases are up 20 percent. They have increased 30 percent in France, 50 percent in Brazil and 80 percent in Italy.

This reversal of fortune comes after new cases had declined by 50 percent in February. That is why the pandemic is now said to be in its "fourth wave" since it was discovered in China in
December 2019 and became a worldwide plague in early 2020.

All is not blue skies in America's war with COVID. Some Northeast and Great Lakes states
are seeing cases rise despite the vaccination campaign. The "British variant" is becoming
more common in the nation.

That news is worryingly similar to national accounts prior to the infamous "third wave" crashing ashore in Avoyelles in January.

National health officials are still predicting the vaccination effort will soon reverse those unsettling numbers attributed to variants and the U.S. will avoid the "fourth wave" now hitting other countries.