Louisiana health officials reported that coronavirus-related deaths rose by 90 Wednesday due to a sharp increase in the reported death toll in Jefferson Parish, where data showed that 37 more people have lost their lives to the virus.

The number of deaths reported Wednesday was the second-highest daily increase since the outbreak began after the Louisiana Department of Health reported on Tuesday that 129 more people died, a jump that put the death toll in Louisiana at over 1,000 people.

Infectious-disease experts and state health officials have cautioned that the daily figures are often impacted by late reporting that makes it difficult to draw conclusions from only a few days of data. Gov. John Bel Edwards on Tuesday said that only a fraction of the deaths reported that day happened in the previous 24 hours.

Still, the number of deaths reported in recent days offered a grim reminder that even as the growth in cases in Louisiana has slowed, many people are still being infected and succumbing in the state.

The number of reported deaths in Jefferson Parish in recent days has started to climb. Over the past three days, the parish has reported 74 more coronavirus-related deaths, or roughly 30% of the total deaths in that area. Along with Orleans Parish, Jefferson Parish saw its case counts rise early in the outbreak. It's not clear whether the deaths reported since Monday occurred over the past three days or if they occurred earlier in the epidemic and are just now being tallied.

Even as the number of people who have died continued to rise, there has continued to be hopeful signs in the rate at which cases were growing in the state. In recent days, data has started to show that stay-at-home orders are "flattening the curve" of new infections.

Louisiana's confirmed cases of coronavirus rose to 21,951 on Wednesday, which was a 433 case increase from Tuesday's report. New cases over the past three days have come in at an average of around 450 cases per day; the last three-day period that showed such a low daily increase was in late March. In early April, new cases were regularly coming in above 1,000 cases per day.

State officials said on Tuesday that it typically takes about 11 days from the time the first symptoms are reported until the day a patient succumbs to the virus. Louisiana saw a surge of new cases at the beginning of the month and the number of new cases have leveled off since. Daily case counts often reflect positive results from tests administered several days prior.

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The number of hospitalized patients fell by 34 and the number of patients needing a ventilator dropped by 11. There are now 1,943 hospitalized coronavirus patients in Louisiana, down 9% from a peak of 2,134 on Monday. Of those hospitalized patients, the number that are on a ventilator fell to 425, which is down more than 25% from 571 on April 4, which represented the peak in ventilator usage.

Orleans Parish reported 11 new deaths and 51 new cases on Wednesday. In addition to the 37 new deaths, Jefferson Parish reported 77 new cases.

The Louisiana Department of Health releases updated coronavirus data every day at noon here.

This report will be updated.

MORE DATA BELOW

LOUISIANA CORONAVIRUS NUMBERS AS OF WEDNESDAY (NOON)

(numbers from Tuesday in parentheses)

Diagnosed cases: 21,951 (21,518)

Known coronavirus-related deaths: 1,103 (1,013)

Hospitalized coronavirus patients: 1,943 (1,977)

Hospitalized coronavirus patients on ventilators: 425 (436)

Parishes with diagnosed cases: 64 of 64 (no change)

Total state tests completed: 5,817 (5,681)

Total commercial tests reported: 116,111 (112,741)

DEATHS, CASES ACROSS NEW ORLEANS METRO AREA AS OF WEDNESDAY