Active cases more than double in the state in the last week

J. Damon Cain, The Register-Herald, Beckley, W.Va.
·2 min read

May 12—Wednesday's report: Active Covid cases continued their steady and relentless climb across West Virginia in the state's Wednesday pandemic report, hitting 1,325 from 1,296 the day before.

Four weeks ago on April 12, actives in the state stood at 326. In subsequent weeks, they have risen to 459 on April 19, 719 on April 26 and 813 on May 3 — adding 512 cases in the last week alone.

All other metrics have been bending trend lines in the same direction though not by such sharp measures.

The state's positive test rate stood at 1.75 percent on April 12. On Wednesday, the rate was recorded at 5.54 percent.

Covid hospitalizations reached 127 in the latest report, up eight in a day and up 28 from April 12.

The number of patients being treated in an intensive care unit was up four from the Tuesday report while the number of patients on a ventilator dropped one, from 14 to 13, in the previous 24 hours.

An increased number of caes is showing up across the country, too, as reports of new coronavirus cases have doubled in the past month. Medical experts point their collective finger at Omicron subvariants that are spreading across the U.S.

The daily case average is twice as high today as it was two weeks ago.

Hospitalizations, too, are also on the rise, driven primarily by increases on the East Coast. Just over 19,000 people are in American hospitals with the coronavirus each day, an increase of 20 percent from two weeks ago.

The New York Times is reporting that the full impact of this surge is believed to be even greater than the latest numbers suggest. Since many infections go uncounted in official case reports, the roughly 73,000 cases currently announced each day likely capture only a portion of the true toll.

Across The Register-Herald's nine-county primary market in southern West Virginia, active cases are down six to 288 from Monday's report, largely driven by a decline from 90 active cases to 65 in Raleigh County. At the same time, actives in Greenbrier County have jumped from 55 to 85 in the past two days.

The Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR), which provides the pandemic count, reported four more Covid deaths since Monday, pushing the overall total to 6,886.

The DHHR confirmed the death of an 82-year-old male from Marshall County. Additional deaths reported on the dashboard as a result of the Bureau for Public Health's continuing data reconciliation with the official death certificate are a 90-year-old female from Marion County, a 69-year-old female from Fayette County and a 69-year-old female from Kanawha County. These deaths occurred in March and April 2022.