Virginia Reaches 20K COVID Deaths, Cases Creep Up
VIRGINIA — Roughly two years and one month after COVID-19 cases were first confirmed in Virginia, the state passed the grim benchmark of 20,000 deaths caused by the respiratory disease. Cases are again climbing in northern Virginia and statewide, trackers show.
The Virginia Department of Health's coronavirus dashboard on Friday showed 20,022 deaths in total to date from the pandemic. A total of 1,683,267 cases have been confirmed.
Between March 14, 2020, and March 14, 2021, the state reported the first 10,000 COVID-related deaths, Inside NOVA reported, and the next 10,000 deaths occurred over the following 13 months.
Virginia has the 16th lowest per-capita death rate among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to statista.com.
According to the New York Times COVID tracker, 73 percent of Virginia residents are fully vaccinated.
The Commonwealth has a daily average of 1,024 cases, a 49 percent increase in the last 14 days.
The state has recorded an average of 259 COVID patients in hospitals, a drop of 29 percent in the last 14 days, the Times said. On average, Virginia has seen 23.6 deaths per day from the disease.
Across Virginia, 27 COVID-19 patients are being cared for in intensive-care units, as of Friday, and 12 are on ventilators. Patients in ICU care reached 670 during the January surge, with 400 patients on ventilators at that time, Inside NOVA reported.
The newest COVID-19 subvariant is making its way across Virginia, arriving after the state and local governments lifted the last pandemic restrictions. Face masks became optional in the state's schools March. 1.
The subvariant designated BA.2 is the latest variety of the omicron variant, which became the dominant version of COVID-19 during Virginia's last surge. BA.2's origins are still unclear, but it has quickly asserted dominance in many countries, including India, Denmark and South Africa.
The strain is also responsible for a recent surge of cases in Europe, as well as spikes in some East Coast cities in the U.S.
Experts from Johns Hopkins and the Virginia Department of Health said the new strain of virus should not cause a surge because the state has a high level of immunity through omicron cases and vaccinations.
The Washington Post reported the BA.2 subvariant is the strain behind about 70 percent of new infections in many parts of the United States, according to an estimate from the genomics company Helix.
Dr. Andrew Pekosz with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health told WBAL that residents who contracted the original omicron strain or are vaccinated and boosted should be protected against the new coronavirus variant.
"It's pretty much the same as BA.1, which is why I'm optimistic we're not going to see a huge surge in cases like we saw with BA.1," Pekosz said. "There's just too much immunity now for this virus to be able to do the same amount of damage that BA.1 did."
The newly identified subvariant is considered to be more transmissible, but it's not expected to cause more severe illness than the delta variant, according to a preliminary study from Statens Serum Institute in Denmark.
The Virginia Health Department said the BA.2 variant has been detected in low levels in Virginia. Dr. Julia Murphy told WWBT Virginians should expect to see more cases caused by the BA.2 variant because it is one and a half times more transmissible.
But the newest variant is not a source of severe illness or hospitalizations so far.
"We think that if you were infected with the omicron and/or you have been vaccinated, a very important point, we think the likelihood you would become infected with this BA.2 variant is low," said Dr. Murphy.
Keri Althoff, a researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, cautioned that CDC case counts underestimate the true numbers because some people are no longer getting tested and others are testing at home and not reporting the results.
Both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were shown to be 70 to 80 percent effective at preventing hospitalization or death. That effectiveness increased to more than 90 percent after a booster shot, according to early studies.
This article originally appeared on the Across Virginia Patch
