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Eight people in Henrico County now are known to have the COVID-19 virus, local and state officials said Sunday. That’s up from five cases earlier this week.
Among the new cases: a man in his 40s, who had no known exposure to the virus, and four residents of the Canterbury Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center on Cambridge Drive in Henrico’s Far West End, Henrico Health Director Danny Avula said during a press briefing Friday.
A woman in her 50s at the facility who exhibited common symptoms was tested earlier this week, and when her results came back positive, health department epidemiologists visited the facility Thursday to test other residents who were displaying similar signs, Avula said. Three of them – a man in his 60s, a woman in her 60s and a woman in her 70s – also tested positive. Two others tested negative, he said.
All four are self-isolating at the facility and have not required hospital care. Only one of the Henrico patients – a man in his 80s who lives at Westminster Canterbury Richmond in Henrico’s Northside – has been hospitalized. He remains there, Avula said. Westminster Canterbury and Canterbury Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center are not related. The latter has about 200 beds and functions as a nursing home and short-term rehabilitation center for patients recovering from medical issues such as strokes.
There’s been about a 20 percent increase from one day to the next in the number of confirmed cases locally – something Avula attributed in part to the increasing availability of tests and also the fact that the virus is now clearly being transferred within the community and not just evident in people who acquired it elsewhere.
The latter is why officials continue to stress the importance of social distancing, Avula said.
“Where there are places were people are congregating in close groups and they’re not spacing themselves six feet apart, that’s concerning, and we are going to advise against that,” he said.
In addition to Henrico’s eight positive cases, Richmond is now reporting six confirmed cases. Six of those 13 total cases were identified in patients tested by LabCorp, which has been able to conduct tests faster since it began taking nasal washings instead of waiting for synthetic nasal swabs, which have proven difficult for many testing sites to acquire, Avula said.
Isolating from others can prove difficult, Avula said, but it is necessary. The message is one he’s had to deliver to his own family and neighbors, since his children often have a number of friends over to play at the basketball court at his house. He emailed neighbors to say that only small groups of children could play at a given time.
The virus can live in the air for about three hours, Avula said, but can live for as long as three days on certain surfaces (such as glass) if conditions are ideal. It survives for about one day on surfaces such as cardboard, he said.
