Few new cases; many in hospitals

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Wise County increased by eight between March 30 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 10,242 — up from 10,234 one week earlier.

The number of Wise County COVID-19 deaths remained at 194.

As of yesterday, 308 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 1,195,155 March 30 to 1,201,260 Wednesday, an increase of 6,105.

However, the number of “probable” cases in Virginia was revised down for the third consecutive week, this time from 472,932 March 30 to 472,122 Wednesday. The reason for the decrease was not immediately clear.
During the same period, the number of confirmed deaths increased by 128 to 16,505.

However, the number of probable COVID-19 deaths was revised down, from 3,296 March 30 to 3,284 Wednesday.

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.