Avoyelles has 30 new COVID cases in 70 tests

The Tuesday COVID update for Avoyelles Parish was "bad news" on two of the three counts being watched.

First the good news. There were no additional COVID-related deaths reported since the Louisiana Health Department's update on Monday, leaving the death toll at 43.

However, the Crossroads Parish did see a return to its mid-summer days with a 30-case increase, bringing the pandemic total to 1,248 and bursting a bubble of mostly single-digit increases over the past week or so.

Perhaps more concerning is that those 30 positive results came on a day when there were only 70 new tests. The parish has had 17,738 tests since March.The only bright spot to be found in that fact is that the parish has had several one-day reports with less than 10 percent positives in the batch of new results.

Gov. John Bel Edwards said on a South Louisiana radio show Monday that he will "almost certainly” extend Phase 2 past Friday (Aug. 28) when it is set to expire. The governor is expected to make an announcement on whether the state continues in Phase 2 or if Phase 3 will begin Friday. The Governor's Office said Phase 2 will definitely remain in effect until the effects of the hurricane have been addressed. The governor will have a press conference at 6 p.m. today in which he may reveal more on whether -- or when -- the state will move to Phase 3.

Edwards said factors affecting his decision would include the reopening of schools around the state, the possibility of needing mass transit to evacuate residents in the path of Hurricane Laura, data disruption due to testing sites being closed due to the effectds of storms Marco an Laura, and, most importantly, the state “seeing more cases over the last seven days than you want to see per 100,000 population."