COVID-19 cases spiking in Henrico, but hospitalizations aren’t

The number of new COVID-19 cases being reported nationally is on the rise, and that trend also is evident in Henrico County.

Now, health officials are encouraging citizens to be aware of the situation and plan accordingly for the next few weeks, during which they expect case counts to rise even higher.

During the first 18 days of May, Henrico officially reported 2,443 new cases of COVID – an average of nearly 136 per day and a significant jump from the 989 official cases it reported during the previous 18 days, according to the Virginia Department of Health.

But the number of new COVID-related hospitalizations in the county actually decreased during the most recent 18-day period when compared with the previous one (to 21, from 27).

Officially reported case counts are not nearly as valuable a data point as they once were, since so many people now test at home and do not report those results to the state. But they still can provide a general sense of the ebb and flow of the virus.

Three COVID-related deaths have been reported in the county so far this month, compared with 12 during the previous 18-day period, though deaths often take several weeks to be entered into the VDH system.

Henrico’s positivity percentage among PCR testing encounters was 21.5% at last check, according to Richmond and Henrico Health Districts Nurse Coordinator Amy Popovich, and Henrico is now firmly in the “yellow,” or medium, community level according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC now measures COVID’s spread according to a three-tiered system – low, medium and high.

In the medium level, officials encourage citizens to consider wearing masks indoors, improve indoor ventilation and maintain distancing. In the high level, those measures would become more urgent, Popovich said.

But if the county moves into the high level, Popovich doesn’t expect it to last more than a few weeks.

“Unfortunately, we are not done with COVID. [But] we are certainly in a much better place than we have been in the past,” she said. “The wave will come down again.”

Nearly 72% of Henricoans are fully vaccinated. Children younger than 5 still are not eligible to be vaccinated but could become eligible sometime within the next month or so, according to Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Children 5 to 11 soon will be eligible for Pfizer booster shots five months after they completed their primary series; the U.S. Food and Drug Administration May 17 amended Pfizer’s emergency use authorization to allow the booster, which will become available once the CDC signs off on it within a few days.

Vaccines and boosters are available at numerous primary care offices, pharmacies and RHHD events, and even on demand through the RHHD’s Doses on Demand program, through which officials will come to homes to administer shots by request. For details, visit www.rchd.com.

A third round of free at-home testing kits now are available to all Americans; click here to request eight of them for your household.  To be tested for COVID locally, visit the RHHD's website.