Another death, 14 cases

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Wise County increased by 14 between April 13 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 10,262 — up from 10,248 one week earlier.
The number of Wise County COVID-19 deaths increased by two, from 195 to 197.

Statewide, the total number of confirmed cases since the pandemic began rose from 1,206,595 April 13 to 1,211,990 Wednesday, an increase of 5,395. The number of “probable” cases in Virginia rose from 473,938 April 13 to 476,078 yesterday, an increase of 2,140.
During the same period, the number of confirmed deaths increased by 117 to 16,765. The number of probable COVID-19 deaths rose from 3,305 April 13 to 3,334 Wednesday, an increase of 29.

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.