Five deaths, 46 new cases reported

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Wise County increased by 46 between March 9 and Wednesday.

The Virginia Department of Health reported Wednesday morning that the county’s total confirmed cases in the months since the pandemic began had risen to 10,200 — up from 10,154 one week earlier.
The number of Wise County COVID-19 deaths increased by five, from 184 to 189.

As of yesterday, 304 Wise Countians were hospitalized with COVID.
Locally and across Virginia, the omicron variant continues to spread, but the rate of increase is slowing down.

Statewide, the total number of confirmed cases since the pandemic began rose from 1,177,551 March 9 to 1,183,900 Wednesday, an increase of 6,349. The number of “probable” cases in Virginia rose from 472,730 March 9 to 473,509 Wednesday, an increase of 779.
During the same period, the number of confirmed deaths increased by 242 to 16,118.

The number of probable COVID-19 deaths increased by 20 to 3,274.

REPORTING CHANGE

The health department announced March 10 that it had made several changes to its COVID-19 reporting dashboards.

“The changes are intended to streamline the information that is most helpful in tracking COVID-19 and its impacts on Virginia at this point in the pandemic,” according to the department.

Acting state health Commissioner Dr. Colin M. Greene said, “With COVID-19 cases continuing to decline, and many communities relaxing restrictions, we are consolidating and focusing on the metrics that matter the most in this new phase of the pandemic.”

Among the notable changes was elimination of a dashboard that provided easily accessible COVID numbers specific to each county and city. Now, the dataset including that information is available on the Virginia Open Data Portal, by clicking the COVID-19 link, and will be updated Monday through Friday.