CoronaVirus

The third wave of the COVID pandemic in Louisiana is continuing its cooling period, per new numbers from the state Department of Health.

The state reports 1,858 COVID hospitalizations today, down from 1,905 yesterday.

The state's hospitalizations rose throughout October-early January to levels exceeding our peaks throughout the pandemic with hospitalization numbers nearing 2,100 at one time.

But in recent weeks, that momentum has slowed and we've seen several days of decreases and an overall downward trend. 

Today, we have 1,858 COVID hospitalizations. We had 1,891 on Jan. 4, so in the past two-plus weeks, we have had an overall decline in our hospitalizations situation. 

The state reports 243 COVID patients are on ventilators today. That number also decreased and was 249 yesterday.

In Region 3, our COVID hospitalizations dropped in the past 24 hours from 102 to 98, but patients on ventilators with COVID stayed at 8. 

The reason why we're seeing decreases in recent weeks are because our positivity in Louisiana is beginning to slowly drop.

The state reports 2,536 new COVID cases today, bringing our confirmed COVID totals to 330,294 since the start of the pandemic.

The state's % positive rate today is 6.7% with 2,536 new cases and 37,430 processed tests.

The state did add 57 new COVID deaths today, a number that has been on the uptick, as more patients have needed to be placed on ventilators in recent weeks. 

A 6.7% positive rate is marked progress for the state. For a lot of December and early January, our positive rates were above 10%, if not above 15% on some days. 

A 6.7% is close to the sub-5% rate that medical experts would like to see the state maintain. 

In Lafourche, the parish added 20 new confirmed COVID cases, bringing parish confirmed virus cases to 6,078. 

The parish's % positive rate today is 4.1% today. 

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