Avoyelles has five more COVID cases in Friday update

Friday's update from the state health department only looks at one day's worth of COVID test results, for a change. Due to Memorial Day, and no reports on the weekends, Tuesday's update was for Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Due to a "processing error" that delayed the Wednesday report until about 6 p.m., the Thursday update was for Wednesday and Thursday.

The number of test results was back down to 120 total, 110 lab tests, with five new COVID cases -- all in lab tests. There were only 10 rapid result tests with no positives.

The one-day positive rate for this report shows 4.5 percent in the lab tests used by the state to determine the parish's official weekly positive rate. The parish's new weekly mark is 6.7, after spending most of the spring with reports no higher than 3 percent until they started inching up in May.

The pandemic totals for Avoyelles as of Friday were 4,311 cases (3,747 / 564) and 123 deaths (115 / 8). The state's totals on Friday were 472,981 cases and 10,615 deaths since March 2020.

The importance of positive rates is to give health care officials an idea of how strong the COVID presence is in a community.

While a historic look at the overall positive rate for the pandemic does not provide that immediate information, it does provide some insight into the communities' 14-month battle with the virus.

Since March 2020, 5.6 percent of all COVID tests in Avoyelles have been positive -- almost 5.1 percent of lab tests and 10.7 percent of rapid result tests. Of Avoyelleans diagnosed with the disease, 2.8 percent have died. That compares to the statewide figures of over 6 percent of those tested being diagnosed and a death rate of 2.2 percent.