Familiar word returns for Avoyelles: 'double-digit increase' in COVID cases

For the first time in several months, Avoyelles Parish had a one-day double-digit increase in COVID cases.

The unwelcome news was aided by the fact that Wednesday's report had over 300 test results instead of the 100-200 that has been common in recent updates. With 369 tests reviewed, 14 were positive. Eleven of those were in 300 lab tests and three were in 69 rapid result tests.

The one-day overall positive rate of 3.8 percent is significantly higher than the official positive rate of 1.2 percent for lab test results in the seven-day period of Dec. 9-15. That was a slight decrease from the 1.4 percent for the Dec. 2-8 period.

Despite that piece of good news, the state increased the risk level in the parish from "moderate" to "substantial."

One possible explanation could be that rapid result tests have made up more of the test samples than earlier in the pandemic, a large share of new cases have been identified by RRT, the "incidence" of COVID diagnoses is used in determining risk and the state does not include RRT results in the official rate.

The Wednesday-to-Wednesday totals, for Dec. 15 to Dec. 22, for all tests, showed 1,181 tests with 25 new cases and no additional deaths. This reflects and overall positive rate of 2.1 percent for the last several days.

Statewide numbers on Wednesday were a bit concerning. There were 2,205 new cases and eight additional deaths out of 27,302 tests -- an 8 percent positive rate for that one-day sample.

Avoyelles' pandemic totals as of Wednesday were 7,468 infections with 181 fatalities. The state totals since March 2020 are 787,538 cases and 14,945 deaths.