Day-to-day COVID increase drops in Virginia

RICHMOND, Va. (WDBJ) - The Virginia Department of Health is reporting 1,852,970 cases of COVID-19 across the commonwealth as of Friday, June 24, 2022, dating to the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. That’s up 2,980 from the 1,849,990 reported Thursday, a smaller increase than Thursday’s 3,085 new cases.

Since the pandemic began, 14,143,297 PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests have been conducted in Virginia as of Friday, with a 17.6% positivity rate from tests over the last week, up from the 17.4% reported Thursday for the previous seven days.

532 people across Virginia were hospitalized as of Friday with confirmed or test-pending cases of COVID-19, up from the 528 reported Thursday. 112,342 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.

As of Friday, there have been 20,519 recorded coronavirus-related deaths in the commonwealth since the pandemic’s beginning, up from 20,498 reported Thursday.

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.