The Virginia Department of Health has updated its COVID-19 Cases by Vaccination Status dashboard to more accurately represent the impact of vaccinations on infection rates in the Commonwealth.
The primary change will be reporting rates of infection, hospitalizations, and deaths by vaccination status — fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated, and unvaccinated. The new dashboard will allow comparison of the rate of persons with COVID-19 who are fully, partially, and not vaccinated.
Counts of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths of people who are fully vaccinated, called vaccine breakthrough, will also be available at the state and health region levels.
Between Jan. 17 and Aug. 14, 2021, 252,938 people developed COVID-19 symptoms or tested positive. Almost all of these were among unvaccinated people; only 10,712 infections have been reported during the same time among the 4.7 million Virginians who have been fully vaccinated. Unvaccinated people developed COVID-19 at a rate 12.5 times higher than fully vaccinated people.
VDH will be reporting an increase in vaccine breakthrough infections, hospitalizations, and deaths this week because of an improvement in data processing. This improvement now allows for COVID-19 cases from the Virginia Electronic Disease Surveillance System (VEDSS, where COVID-19 cases including hospitalizations and deaths are collected) to be automatically matched with immunization records in the Virginia Immunization Information System (VIIS, where all COVID-19 vaccinations are recorded).
Previously, VDH staff were performing the match by hand to determine vaccination status, which took additional time. Please note, all COVID-19 data are preliminary and subject to change and will be updated as quality assurance activities are completed.
For more information, see three new posts VDH published on its Data Insights blog describing COVID-19 attacks rates and trends by age groups, vaccine breakthrough infections, and vaccine effectiveness in more detail.
For more information on COVID-19 in Virginia, visit the VDH Coronavirus website. Anyone age 12 or older can find free vaccination clinics near them by visiting Vaccinate.Virginia.gov or by calling 877-VAX-IN-VA (877-829-4682, TTY users may call 7-1-1).
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Chris Graham
