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Since of the start of August, the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Louisiana has fallen by nearly 200, according to statistics released Tuesday by the Louisiana Department of Health.

In Tuesday’s report, the LDH said that there were 1,335 patients hospitalized in the state’s hospitals, and 214 of those patients were on ventilators. Those were both decreases from Monday, when there were 1,382 hospitalized patients (decrease of 47) and 215 patients on ventilators (decrease of one).

Both statistics have fallen since Aug. 1, as well. On that day, the state reported 1,534 hospitalizations and 221 patients on ventilators.

The high for hospitalizations in July was 1,600 on both July 24 and July 27, and the high for patients on ventilators in July was 222 on the final day of the month. On July 1, there were 799 hospitalizations and 84 patients on ventilators.

Another promising improvement that has been seen in August is in the percentage of positive tests. From July 8-12, there were five straight days where the positivity rate was reported as higher than the minimum 10-percent federal threshold. It was also higher than 10 percent on July 23 (10.5 percent) and July 26 (11.4 percent).

However, since July 27 there has not been a single day where the positivity rate has been higher than 10 percent. On Tuesday, the state reported 1,164 positive cases in 20,631 tests — a positivity rate of just 5.6 percent.

The average number of daily deaths is slightly up compared to July. In August so far, there has been an average of 32.7 deaths per day — compared to 25.8 deaths per day in the prior month.

However, it is possible that trend may be improving as well. The average number of daily deaths over the past four days of August is 26.5. The average over the first seven days of August was 36.3.

On Tuesday, the state reported 1,164 new cases, bringing the total since the start of the pandemic to 133,125. Its 26 new deaths brought that total to 4,195.

The state reported 20,631 new tests — and through the entire pandemic it has collected results from 1,568,564 tests. In the month of August, the state has averaged 20,575 tests a day.

The LDH releases new statistics every day at noon, except for Saturdays. They can be found online at ldh.la.gov/coronavirus.