State sees one COVID death every 39 minutes

Every 39 minutes, a person died from COVID-19 in Virginia last week, according to reports from the state health department Monday.

The state’s COVID-19 numbers continued to climb, with 35,850 new cases over the past week and 261 deaths, according to the Virginia Department of Health’s Jan. 11 update.

The current seven-day positivity rate is 16.7%, up nearly one percentage point from last week, and the average daily number of new cases over the past seven days was 5,121, a new record in the state. Virginia has recorded 403,386 cases and 5,393 deaths since March 2020.

Meanwhile, 3,117 people are hospitalized with confirmed COVID cases or pending test results, the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association reported Monday, with 35% of all ventilators and 56% of ICU beds in use, including surge beds. Those percentages include COVID and non-COVID patients.

The state’s vaccination campaign — which was off to a slow start in early weeks, with less than 25% of all COVID-19 vaccine doses having been administered as of last Wednesday — is off to a faster clip as of Monday’s update. According to VDH figures, 189,283 total doses have been administered, out of 560,400 total doses distributed to hospitals, health districts and long-term care facilities; 15,130 people have received two doses and are considered fully vaccinated.

Last week, Gov. Ralph Northam said the state is averaging about 14,000 shots per day, but he wants to increase that to 25,000 daily shots quickly, with a goal of reaching 50,000 shots a day as soon as enough doses arrive in the state. To further this effort, he named Dr. Danny Avula, the director of Richmond and Henrico County’s health departments, as the state’s vaccine coordinator. On Friday, VDH announced that 11 health districts — primarily in Northern and Southwest Virginia, including the Roanoke and New River valleys — will begin offering vaccination to “frontline essential workers” including police, teachers and grocery employees starting Monday Jan. 11.

More details about who is eligible to receive a vaccine in group 1b, as well as which regions of the state have entered that phase, are available at VDH’s vaccine page.

As of Jan. 7, all of the state’s health districts have positivity rates above 10%. The state’s highest rates and/or sharpest one-week spikes are in the following districts:

• Hampton — 25.2%, up from 21.8% on Dec. 31
• Mount Rogers (cities of Bristol and Galax and counties of Bland, Carroll, Grayson, Smyth, Washington and Wythe) — 24.3%, up from 23.4%
• Eastern Shore (Accomack and Northampton counties) — 23.8%, up from 19.5%
• Chesapeake — 23.3%, up from 22.7%
• Portsmouth — 23.0%, up from 19.4%
• Lenowisco (Lee, Scott and Wise counties and the city of Norton) — 22.9%, down from 32.4%
• Central Virginia (Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell counties and Lynchburg) — 21.7%, down from 24.3%
• Peninsula (Newport News, Poquoson, Williamsburg, James City and York counties) — 21.6%, up from 16.6%
• Piedmont (Amelia, Buckingham, Charlotte, Cumberland, Lunenburg, Nottoway and Prince Edward counties) — 21.6%, up from 18.3%
• Cumberland Plateau (Buchanan, Dickenson, Russell and Tazewell counties)  — 21.5%, down from 22.8%
• Western Tidewater (Isle of Wight and Southampton counties and the cities of Franklin and Suffolk) — 21.4%, up from 13.1%
• West Piedmont (Franklin, Henry and Patrick counties and the city of Martinsville) — 21.0%, up from 19.0%
• Chickahominy (Charles City, Goochland, Hanover and New Kent counties) — 15.1%, up from 10.0%

These are the 10 Virginia localities that have seen the most cases in the state, as of Jan. 11:

• Fairfax County: 49,840
• Prince William County: 28,532
• Virginia Beach: 20,420
• Loudoun County: 15,443
• Chesterfield County: 14,778
• Henrico County: 14,567
• Chesapeake: 10,420
• Richmond: 10,464
• Norfolk: 10,176
• Arlington County: 10,117

Globally, there are 90.4 million reported COVID-19 cases and 1,936,898 confirmed deaths, as of Jan. 11. The United States, which has the most confirmed cases and deaths worldwide, has seen 22.4 million confirmed cases so far, with 374,442 deaths attributed to the coronavirus since February.

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