LSUHS vice chancellor says end of pandemic isn t close houmatoday.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from houmatoday.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
COVID-19 roared into northwest Louisiana on March 12 of last year.
That was the day SWEPCO announced one of its employees in downtown Shreveport had contracted the virus. While there had been cases nationally, this was the first in northwest Louisiana and little was known about the virus at the time.
The employee was quarantined and contact tracing begun.
Later on the same day, CHRISTUS Shreveport-Bossier said late on March 11, its CHRISTUS Highland Medical Center in Shreveport received a presumptive positive result for a patient with COVID-19.
Now, nearly a year later, those two cases were the beginning of an onslaught. In Caddo Parish, there have been nearly 25,000 cases and the parish is approaching 700 deaths due to the virus.
COVID-19 positivity rates in northwest Louisiana were under desired goals in all but one parish for the week of Feb. 22-March 1.
Medical experts have indicated a desire for the positive COVID-19 test percentage to be at 5% or lower. The only parish in northwest Louisiana to exceed that goal for the week was Bienville Parish at 5.71%.
Caddo Parish had 251 new cases on 10,308 tests for a 2.43% positive test percentage. The parish has 24,751 cases and 675 COVID-19 deaths, according to the Louisiana Department of Health.There were 10 new COVID-19 deaths last week.
Bossier Parish saw its positivity drop from 8.5% the previous week to 4.53% last week. There were 165 new cases in Bossier on 3,641 tests. The parish has 13,034 total cases and 262 COVID-19 deaths. There were six deaths due to the virus in the parish reported last week.