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Clear skies. Low 28F. Winds light and variable..
Clear skies. Low 28F. Winds light and variable.
Updated: January 23, 2023 @ 9:13 pm
Halifax County is one of 15 localities in the high community level for COVID-19 this week.
Halifax County is one of 15 localities in the high community level for COVID-19 this week.
Cases and hospitalizations for COVID-19 are declining, signaling the peak of the winter surge may already have passed.
As of Friday, Sentara Halifax Regional Hospital was treating six patients for COVID-19. That’s a substantial drop from the 16 patients earlier this month.
Throughout Virginia, the weekly case rates have dropped from two weeks in a row, according to Friday’s report from the University of Virginia’s Boicomplexity Institute.
However, Halifax County remains in a high community level, a designation defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In these areas, the federal agency recommends residents wear masks for indoor public settings.
There are only 15 other localities in the high level this week in the state, down from 65 seven days ago.
Statewide hospitalizations, while elevated, are slowly declining, UVa reported. In fact, as of Friday, 845 people were being treated for COVID-19 at hospitals around Virginia, representing a 15% drop in two weeks.
“ICU and ventilator patient numbers are also down slightly,” UVa researchers wrote. “Influenza hospitalization rates have also declined significantly, though flu seasons sometimes have a second wave.”
Virginia has dropped down to the moderate state of flu spread. A month ago, the commonwealth was at the top tier, known as very high.
“Overall, it is expected that patient load at Virginia’s hospitals will be stable for the rest of the month,” scientists wrote Friday.
According to the CDC, the newest subvariant — dubbed XBB.1.5 — is dominant in Virginia, representing about 60% of all cases. The variant has shown the ability to infect people with prior immunity.
UVa has paused its biweekly update of projecting the course of the pandemic, another nod to COVID-19 no longer being the threat it once was.
“These projections were most useful when some external factor threatened to drastically alter the mechanics of the epidemic,” scientists wrote.
“However, we have entered a new phase in the COVID-19 pandemic,” officials wrote in the report. “Most Virginians are back to normal routines.”
While it still remains a problem — it killed 140 Virginians in the first two weeks of December alone — the impact on hospitals has decreased.
Those with a weakened immune system are the most vulnerable when it comes to negative outcomes with COVID-19.
“But, for better or worse, COVID-19 is now part of our overall health landscape,” researchers said. “Widely available vaccination remains our best defense to the risks it poses.”
While the projections are halted, it doesn’t mean monitoring won’t continue. The Virginia Department of Health will still work with UVa to give insight on changes in general.
To that end, UVa has debuted short-term forecasts for COVID-19 and flu.
“While scenario projections helped us engage with potential long-term futures that could come to pass, these short-term forecasts show what we expect will happen in the coming weeks,” the report explained. “While no one can predict the future with certainty, short-term forecasts tend to be more accurate, and are more useful when we don’t expect major changes to the underlying mechanics.”
When needed, UVa will reinstate the scenario projections.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed weaknesses in case data measuring and forecasting the course of a disease, UVa reported.
When the pandemic started, there were test shortages and weekslong wait times for results.
In addition, some people who had mild cases didn’t get tested at all. Now that at-home kits are widely available, positive results no longer funnel into a database used to track cases.
However, there are some tools that will expand.
“Wastewater surveillance, emergency department visits, genomic sequencing, and even online searches, can augment case data to provide earlier warning and improve forecasts,” researchers said.