Some good news on the COVID data front: Virginia cases and hospitalizations are way down, suggesting that we’re on the downslope of the Omicron wave.
The Virginia Department of Health COVID data dashboard reported just 4,247 new cases on Monday, dropping the seven-day average of new cases to 9,194, less than half the peak of an average of 18,726 new cases per day back on Jan. 13, two and a half weeks ago.
Factoring in that case reports are often lower on Mondays coming off a weekend, the one-day case number for last Monday, Jan. 24, was 7,155; the previous Monday, Jan. 17, VDH reported 10,842 new cases; and back on Monday, Jan. 10, the number was 15,463 new cases.
On the hospitalization numbers front, the dashboard from the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association reports 2,896 people with COVID in Virginia hospitals today, Monday, Jan. 31.
The peak came back on Jan. 18 with 3,948, meaning we’ve seen a decrease of 26.6 percent over the past two weeks.
We’re still lagging in vaccinations and booster shots from where we need to be. VDH reports that 68.8 percent of Virginians are fully vaccinated, and just 28.8 percent have received a booster shot.
This despite VDH data showing that unvaccinated people are 35.7 times more likely to come down with COVID, 21.1 times more likely to be hospitalized and 19.6 times more likely to die than those who are fully vaccinated.
Not percent more likely; times more likely.
To illustrate the difference: if you have a dollar, $1.35 is 35 percent more than that dollar; $35 is 35 times relative to that dollar.
The CDC is also saying that people who are vaccinated and boosted are a third as likely to die from COVID as people are to die from the seasonal flu.
And yet, the numbers are what they are.
At least things are getting better. It didn’t need to get this bad, but, it’s getting better.
Story by Chris Graham
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