COVID in Virginia: Day-to-day increase rises; positive new-case test percentage up again

RICHMOND, Va. (WDBJ) - The Virginia Department of Health is reporting 1,100,900 cases of COVID-19 across the commonwealth as of Thursday, December 30, 2021, dating to the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. That’s up 13,500 from Wednesday’s reported 1,087,400, a bigger increase than the 12,112 new cases reported from Tuesday to Wednesday.

Per the latest update from the state’s vaccine dashboard, 13,957,953 doses of vaccine have been administered in Virginia as of Thursday. 77.1% of the state’s population have gotten at least one dose, with 67.5% fully vaccinated. 88.5% of Virginians 18 and over have received at least one dose and 78% are fully vaccinated.

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11,179,014 PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests have been conducted in Virginia as of Thursday, with a 19.3% positivity rate from those tests over the last week, up from the 17.4% reported Wednesday.

As of Thursday, there have been 15,565 recorded coronavirus-related deaths in the commonwealth since the pandemic’s beginning, up from the 15,541 reported Wednesday.

2,101 people across Virginia were hospitalized as of Thursday with confirmed or test-pending cases of COVID-19, up from the 2,014 reported Wednesday. 78,065 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.

The 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.

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