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Henrico County's 7-day COVID-19 positivity percentage dropped below 7% for the first time since last Friday, falling from 7.2% all the way to 6.2% July 26, the most recent day for which such data is available.
An uptick in testing during the past two weeks – including the addition Tuesday of more than 3,000 backlogged testing encounters reported by the Virginia Department of Health – likely is the cause of the decrease.
Today, the VDH reported 43 new cases of COVID-19 one new death (of a person older than 80) and two new hospitalizations related to the virus in the county. That increased the county’s overall case count to 3,509, its death count to 178 and its hospitalization count to 308.
The county’s current 7-day positivity percentage actually now matches its overall positivity percentage during the entirety of the pandemic, with more than 56,000 tests having been conducted of county residents, according to the VDH.
Each day, the Virginia Department of Health publishes a new batch of virus-related information – including the number of tests reported the previous day and the number of new confirmed cases, hospitalizations and deaths, among other data – but the Citizen has observed that it frequently it attributes additional data to those daily figures days, weeks or even months later, as that information is processed and becomes available.
For example, on July 28, the VDH reported that a total of 211 PCR tests had been conducted in Henrico July 27. But on the same day, the total number of PCR tests reported to have been conducted in the county overall increased by more than 3,800, according to the VDH.
Many of those newly reported tests apparently had been attributed to July 19 and July 22, since testing totals for those two days skyrocketed from less than 800 apiece to more than 1,200 and 1,500, respectively.
By this morning, the number of PCR tests reported to have been conducted in Henrico July 27 had tripled from the originally reported number (to 633).
In part to account for these regular changes, according to VDH officials, the 7-day positivity percentage intentionally lags several days behind the initial reporting of new information. (For example, the 7-day percentage reported today takes into consideration all tests and results from July 20-26.)
In theory, that allows time for any additional data to be included so that the 7-day figure represents the most accurate snapshot of that period.
The positivity percentage is calculated across a 7-day window because some test results take that long to be returned, VDH officials have told the Citizen.
– Will Gonzalez contributed to this article
