By Randy Arrington
LURAY, Feb. 11 — After sitting at around 20 percent for more than a month, Page County’s seven-day positivity rate has dropped dramatically in the past two weeks, according to the Virginia Department of Health, and is now currently reported at 9.1 percent.
The county’s positivity rate was at a low of 3.4 percent in mid-November, but climbed as high as 22.5 percent six weeks later on Dec. 31. The county’s positivity rate then declined over the last six weeks and has now been under the 10-percent threshold that health officials desire for four consecutive days.
After once leading the Lord Fairfax Health District with the highest positivity rate in the region for more than a month between December and January, Page County now touts the second-lowest positivity rate in the district. Here’s a comparison of seven-day positivity rates across the health district as of Thursday morning:
• 12.4% — City of Winchester;
• 10.5% — Frederick and Shenandoah counties;
• 10.1% — Clarke County;
• 9.1% — Page County;
• 6.6% — Warren County.
Page’s 14-day positivity rate stands at 11.6 percent — the lowest since early December.
The state health department reported 16 new cases of COVID-19 in Page County on Thursday. That marks the highest level in the past six days, after Page saw eight new cases reported Wednesday and seven on Tuesday. No cases of the coronavirus were reported in the county on Monday — that marked the first day that Page has seen no cases reported since Nov. 15.
Page County has not reported a hospitalization due to COVID in six days, and the county has not seen a death related to the pandemic in seven days.
According to ZIP code data provided by VDH, the new cases of COVID-19 reported over the last week in Page County surfaced in the following areas:
• 30 cases — Luray area (22835);
• 17 cases — Shenandoah area (22849);
• 13 cases — Stanley area (22851);
• 3 cases — Rileyville area (22650).
As of Thursday morning, the state health department’s vaccine dashboard showed that 3,967 people in Page County (nearly 17 percent of the population) have received the first dose of the vaccine. The report also shows 801 people in the county (about 3.3 percent) have been fully vaccinated to include the “booster” or second dose.
Below is a breakdown of vaccine doses administered and those who have been fully vaccinated (two doses) across the Lord Fairfax Health District as of Thursday’s report:
• 10,659 doses administered, 2,352 fully vaccinated — City of Winchester;
• 9,062 doses administered, 2,755 fully vaccinated — Shenandoah County;
• 9,055 doses administered, 2,034 fully vaccinated — Frederick County;
• 5,717 doses administered, 1,401 fully vaccinated — Warren County;
• 3,967 doses administered, 801 fully vaccinated — Page County;
• 2,943 doses administered, 644 fully vaccinated — Clarke County.
The Lord Fairfax Health District reported a total of 86 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, after reporting 70 on Wednesday. This marked only the second time since Dec. 1 that the health district reported two consecutive days with less than 100 new cases of the virus.
Frederick County, who has lead the health district in many COVID categories for most of the pandemic, averaged between 50 to 100 cases per day from late December through January. However, on Thursday Frederick County reported 32 new cases, after only having 26 on Wednesday.
The health district has reported 10 hospitalizations and six deaths related to COVID-19 over the past week. Clarke County reported five of those hospitalizations and three deaths on Thursday alone. Shenandoah County has reported two deaths, while Winchester had one.
Statewide, 3,699 new cases of COVID-19 were reported on Thursday, slightly up from 3,203 cases on Wednesday and 3,291 on Tuesday.
Virginia’s seven-day positivity rate has been declining for 32 consecutive days and now sits at 10.1 percent.
Statewide hospitalizations for COVID-19 are at 2,136, according to the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association — down 308 over the last week. Among those patients, 451 are being treated in intensive care units — down 37 over the last seven days. Among those, 289 are currently on ventilators — down 20 in the past week.
As of Thursday morning, Virginia had administered nearly 1.2 million vaccines for COVID-19, with 946,404 people statewide being vaccinated with at least one dose — about 11.1 percent of the state’s overall population. A total of 245,471 people in Virginia have been fully vaccinated.
Currently, an average of 32,951 doses of the vaccine are being administered each day in Virginia.
The state health department has reported 308 deaths statewide related to the pandemic in the past week. A total of 6,958 people have died from COVID-19 in Virginia since March 14 — 2,138 (or 31 percent) since Christmas.
For more information about COVID-19 variants, visit the VDH COVID-19 Testing website and the CDC New COVID-19 Variants website. For more information on DCLS and its use of next-generation sequencing, visit dgs.virginia.gov/dcls.
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