St. Martin COVID cases continue to jump; no deaths reported locally

St. Martin Parish's number of new COVID-19 cases showed a sharp increase Saturday for the fourth day this week in the daily report from the Louisiana Office of Public Health.

Twenty-six new cases raised the number of St. Martin people who have tested positive to 509. The OPH reported Monday that 351 cases had been recorded in St. Mary since the pandemic began, so the parish's total has increased by 158 in a week. It's not clear to what degree those totals reflect actual new cases, backlogged testing that adds weeks-old results to the database or cases reassigned to different parishes during Thursday's database review.

Until this week. St. Martin's daily totals were similar to those reported Saturday for St. Mary and Assumption.

St. Mary has five new cases for a total of 378 positives. Assumption has three new cases for a total of 327.

The death toll numbers remained the same locally: 35 for St. Mary, 28 for St. Martin and 14 for Assumption.

Statewide:

--870 new cases were reported Saturday, bringing the total of positives to 49,358.

--20 new deaths were reported, bringing that total to 2,992.

--13 additional people were hospitalized in Saturday's report for a total of 574.

--5 fewer people, or 73, are on ventilators Saturday.