COVID hospitalizations remain low in Henrico but spike statewide
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New COVID-19-related hospitalizations in Henrico have remained incredibly low in recent days and weeks, even as statewide totals have spiked during the same timeframe, spurred by an explosion of confirmed COVID cases.
The county witnessed six new virus-related hospitalizations during the past three days but continues to average just more than one new such hospitalization per day during the past week – roughly the same level at which it’s been since late September.
But statewide, nearly 3,500 people are currently hospitalized with COVID and another 200 are hospitalized with COVID symptoms and awaiting test results, according to the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association. That total continues to push the state’s all-time pandemic record higher by the day. The numbers reflect people admitted to hospitals with COVID or diagnosed with it upon arrival for COVID symptoms and do not include people who already were hospitalized for something else and later tested positive for COVID, VHHA spokesperson Julian Walker told the Citizen.
The state now is averaging 305 new such hospitalizations per day, up from just 66 per day one month ago.
The rising hospitalization rates are the result of an explosion of COVID cases, mostly related to the highly contagious Omicron variant. Though that variant generally has been shown to produce far less severe outcomes in most people, the sheer number of new cases is producing more hospitalizations, even though they are occurring at a lower ratio than in earlier waves of the pandemic.
Virginia set another new single-day record for new confirmed COVID-19 cases Saturday with 26,175 – a total that was 34% higher than the previous record one-day total of 19,506, set just six days earlier.
Henrico's Saturday total was 882, it second-highest single-day total during the pandemic. The county is averaging 663 new daily cases during the past seven days; that average has remained relatively stable during that timeframe, too.
More than 21% of all confirmed 49,176 COVID cases reported in Henrico during the pandemic have occurred in the past 18 days, according to Virginia Department of Health data.
But so far, those numbers have not resulted in associated jumps in severe outcomes in the county, which in addition to the low hospitalization totals has reported only one COVID-related death this year. Both metrics typically lag days or weeks behind a spike in new cases, however.
More than two-thirds of the 5,754 new cases reported in Henrico during 2022 are currently not attributable to a specific age group, according to the VDH, but of those cases that are properly classified by age, the highest totals have occurred in the 10 to 19 year-old age group (408 cases) and the 20 to 29 year-old group (356 cases). Another 306 have occurred in children nine or younger.
During the same 10-day period, however, there’s been only one virus-related hospitalization reported among members of those three groups.
As a demand for COVID testing has increased, Virginia last week established nine new community testing centers statewide, including one at the Richmond Raceway in Henrico, which opened Saturday. The Biden administration also is expected (perhaps as soon as this week) to launch a website through which people may request free rapid tests to be mailed to them. The federal government purchased 500 million such tests and expects to be able to begin shipping them within a week or so, according to a report last week in the Washington Post.
