COVID in VA: Hospitalizations and positive new-case test percentages continue to drop

RICHMOND, Va. (WDBJ) - The Virginia Department of Health is reporting 918,700 cases of COVID-19 across the commonwealth as of Monday, October 25, 2021, dating to the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. That’s up 943 from Sunday’s reported 917,757.

NOTE: VDH updates the cases and testing dashboard Monday through Friday.

Per the latest update from the state’s vaccine dashboard, 11,248,991 doses of vaccine had been administered in Virginia as of Sunday. (New vaccination numbers have not been posted for Monday.) 69.4% of the state’s population had gotten at least one dose, with 62.4% fully vaccinated. 82.3% of Virginians 18 and over had received at least one dose and 74.2% were fully vaccinated.

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9,844,653 PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests have been conducted in Virginia as of Monday, with a 6.3% positivity rate from those tests over the last week, down from the 6.5% reported Friday.

As of Monday, there have been 13,745 recorded coronavirus-related deaths in the commonwealth since the pandemic’s beginning, up from the 13,668 reported Friday.

1,230 people across Virginia were hospitalized as of Monday with confirmed or test-pending cases of COVID-19, down from the 1,266 reported Friday. 70,944 COVID patients have been released from hospitals in Virginia since the beginning of the pandemic. That’s according to the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association, which gets a daily report from hospitals around the commonwealth.

These hospital numbers are different from those reported by VDH, which only gathers hospitalization status at the time each case is investigated by VDH and is an under-representation of Virginia hospitalizations.

Any new confirmed cases from health departments throughout the state the rest of the day won’t show up until at least the following day on the state list, as the official numbers are only updated once a day, with a 5 p.m. cutoff each day for new cases to be reflected on the next day’s list.