Daily COVID count higher now than one year ago
Confirmed new daily cases of COVID-19 in Lincoln Parish are twoto-three times higher this January than in January 2021.
Cases have increased by an average of 32 new cases per day so far this year, according to Louisiana Department of Health statistics.
Individual daily totals ranged from a high of 56 — that occurred this week from Wednesday to Thursday — to a low of 22 recorded from Jan. 4 to Jan. 5. In January of last year, daily cases increased by only between 10 and 15 per day.
As of Friday, some 5,642 parish residents have had COVID since the pandemic began in March 2020. That number could include some reinfections. LDH began including reinfections in the daily totals this week but does not separate them from first-time cases.
Re-infections are considered to be a positive test followed by another positive test, with at least 90 days in between, state Health Officer Dr. Joe Kanter said Thursday during Gov. John Bel Edwards’ weekly COVID briefing.
Kanter said reinfections that are being reported have increased six-fold since last year.
As of Friday’s LDH update, there have been 48,717 reinfections since the start of the pandemic, with 1,375 new reinfections recorded from Thursday to Friday.
Almost all of the COVID cases statewide are the Omicron variant, according to the LDH dashboard.
“We remain deep in the Omicron surge,” Kanter said.
But there’s reason to believe the surge may be peaking, the two officials said. For the second consecutive week, hospital emergency room visits by patients with COVID-like illness are down statewide, as are positive test results.
“You never really know for sure that you’ve peaked until you’re on the other side of it. It is true now and it will remain true for the next couple of weeks that there’s just more COVID out there in Louisiana than at any point prior in the pandemic,” Kanter said.
Edwards cautioned when the peak does come, all areas of the state won’t plateau simultaneously. COVID levels will stay high for a while.
Louisiana now tops the 1 million confirmed case mark, but “we know that’s an undercount,” Kanter said.
The number doesn’t include individuals who test at home and COVID cases that go unreported.
Louisiana had 70 COVID outbreaks last week, a pandemic record, Edwards said.
Half of those occurred in retail settings where people weren’t wearing masks, he said, reiterating his call for Louisianans to continue to mask up in indoor settings.
An outbreak is defined as two or more cases among unrelated individuals that have visited a site within a 14-day time period.
