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Louisiana Reports Smallest Increase In COVID-19 Cases Since Late March

A drive through COVID-19 testing location at  Alario Center, 2000 Segnette Blvd, Westwego. Operated by the Jefferson Parish Emergency Management Department. New Orleans, Louisiana. April 8, 2020.
Ben Depp
/
For WWNO
A drive through COVID-19 testing location at Alario Center, 2000 Segnette Blvd, Westwego. Operated by the Jefferson Parish Emergency Management Department. New Orleans, Louisiana. April 8, 2020.

The Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) reported 200 new positive tests for the coronavirus Tuesday — the smallest increase in sheer numbers since March 21 and the smallest percent increase since the first case was reported.

The department reported 200 news cases since yesterday. That's a growth of .74 percent.

Growth in positive test results is a reflection of testing itself as much as the actual change in the number of known cases. And unknown cases, of course, loom large in any analysis of COVID-19 data.

What we do know is that the LDH was reporting fewer than 100 new cases a day in the early weeks of testing, with the exception of two days, and that those numbers jumped into the multi-hundreds three days into the department reporting completed commercial lab tests — March 20.

For weeks afterward, growth rates were inconsistent on a day-to-day basis, but were frequently above 20, 30 and even 40 percent.

On April 12, things evened out and the growth rate hovered between 2 and 3 percent. Since April 21, it's been between 1 and 2 percent, dropping below 1 percent twice — on Sunday and today.

A couple important things to note:

1. Growth on Sundays and Mondays is always skewed by weekend reporting practices.

2. The growth rate is very high in the early days because there are only a few known cases (so growth from one to three is a 200 percent increase, for example).

Long story short: the data doesn't give us a perfect picture, but it is showing us a trend.

A quick look at the rest of today's LDH report:

Another 61 people have died of COVID-19 in Louisiana. In all, 1,758 people have died here.

There have been 27,268 known cases. State and commercial labs have completed a combined 151,108 tests.

As of today, 1,666 people are hospitalized with COVID-19. That's 17 fewer people than yesterday, and that number has been in a pretty steady downward trend.

There are 244 people on ventilators — 18 fewer than yesterday. That number is also decreasing fairly consistently.

As of April 26, 17,303 people are presumed recovered.

Copyright 2020 WWNO - New Orleans Public Radio

Ashley Dean is the digital news editor for New Orleans Public Radio. Before coming to New Orleans, she was the editor of Denverite, a digital news startup now under the Colorado Public Radio umbrella. Prior to that she was a copy editor and features writer at the Denver Post, and before that, a music reporter for the Colorado Daily. She graduated from Columbia University with a master's degree in journalism and from Northeastern University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.