New COVID-19 cases in Henrico plummet, but 68 new deaths reported this month

New confirmed COVID-19 cases in Henrico have plummeted this month, dropping the county’s average number of new daily cases during the past week to just 109 – nearly 600 lower than one month ago.

But the effects of the now-subsiding Omicron variant wave are evident in the county: 68 new virus-related deaths have been reported this month in Henrico, many of which occurred in January in the wake of the surge.

Of those, 31 occurred among people 80 or older, 14 in people in their 70s, 13 among people in their 60s, five among those in their 50s and four among people in their 40s.

Officially, the county has witnessed fewer than 100 new daily cases (as reported by the Virginia Department of Health) during each of the past four days. It’s the first time that’s happened since the first week of December.

Case counts generally are no longer considered as meaningful a statistic as they once were, since many people now use at-home tests, whose results typically are not reported to the VDH.

But they do help provide a general sense of the ebbs and flows of the pandemic. During the height of the Omicron wave, official case counts reflected the surge, peaking at 942 new cases Jan. 2.

Hospitalization totals in Henrico have remained relatively consistent throughout the Omicron surge, fluctuating generally between 1 and 3 new ones per day during the past two months.

During the past week, eight new hospitalizations related to the virus have been reported in Henrico.