Technical error preventing Virginia Dept. of Health from releasing latest case update - WHSV

RICHMOND, Va. (WHSV) — UPDATE (10:50 a.m. April 22):

Graphic provided by the Virginia Dept. of Health showing cases on a rate per 100,000 people as of April 21, 2020

We have been unable to post our normal daily update on Virginia's COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, testing, and other relevant local data yet on Wednesday.

That's because the Virginia Department of Health has been dealing with technical difficulties updating their online state coronavirus dashboard, which is normally updated right around 9 a.m. each day.

According to a statement tweeted by the department, "the process which compiles COVID-19 case information overnight experienced an error that caused complete case information to be unavailable this morning. VDH staff are working to resolve the issue, and updated information will be posted as soon as possible."

It's unclear if the error may be related to the new reporting system that the department first used on Tuesday that included more comprehensive details for each locality across Virginia.

Until the issue is resolved and the latest numbers are released, below is our most recent update on Virginia's case total as of Tuesday.

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As of Tuesday, April 21, the Virginia Department of Health has received 9,630 positive or presumptive positive tests for COVID-19 across the commonwealth.

New positive test results submitted to the department accelerated rapidly throughout April, with Virginia crossing 2,000 cases on Friday, April 3; 3,000 cases by Tuesday, April 7; 4,000 cases by Thursday, April 9; 5,000 by Saturday, April 11; 6,000 by Tuesday, April 14; 7,000 by Friday, April 17; and 8,000 by Saturday, April 18.

As of Monday, there had been three days of declining new case totals, but that streak of lower totals was shattered by a jump of more than 600 cases on Tuesday.

It is important to remember that many tests still take days to process – up to a week and a half for some commercial labs – and then sometimes a day or two for the results to be submitted to the Department of Health, so the official tally of cases always reflects where testing was several days before. As testing capacity increases in Virginia, the confirmed cases increase too.

But researchers are also extremely confident there are many more people with positive cases who have not been tested because they didn't show symptoms, but can still pass the virus on to others.'

Virginia's projected peak, according to UVA data modeling, is in late April.

Case totals as of April 21

By April 21, the Virginia Department of Health had confirmed 9,630 cases of COVID-19 across the commonwealth.

Those positive test results are out of 58,354 people that have been tested in Virginia, which comes out to more than 16% of Virginians tested for the coronavirus receiving positive results.

At this point, 1,581 Virginians have been hospitalized due to the disease caused by the virus, and 324 have died of causes related to the disease. In a press briefing by Governor Northam, Dr. Norm Oliver, the state health commissioner, said the data on deaths displayed by the VDH is almost always delayed by a day or several from when the deaths actually occurred.

The numbers on Tuesday showed an increase of 24 deaths from the 300 that had been reported on Monday, but they did not include the 10 deaths reported by Accordius Health in Harrisonburg as of Monday evening. Instead, the VDH dashboard showed one death for the Central Shenandoah Health District, in Rockingham County.

As of April 21, the state website has been updated to show a lot more detail by locality.

The hospitalization numbers are cumulative — they represent the total number of people hospitalized due to the disease throughout the outbreak and not the total number currently in the hospital. For current hospitalization stats, the VHHA offers more helpful data.

Local cases

In our area, as of April 21, there were at least 28 confirmed cases in Augusta County, 264 cases in Harrisonburg, 122 cases in Rockingham County, 14 cases in Page County, 45 cases in Shenandoah County, 10 cases in Staunton, 8 cases in Waynesboro, 83 cases in Frederick County, 27 cases in Winchester, and 5 cases in Rockbridge County, along with 3 in Lexington.

A large portion of the Harrisonburg number, which has the most confirmed cases in our region, comes from an outbreak at Accordius Health Harrisonburg, where the Virginia Department of Health and UVA Health collaborated to test every resident and staff member, finding 81 residents and 12 staff members positive by this past weekend

By Monday, April 20, the facility had confirmed ten deaths due to coronavirus.

It's one of several outbreaks across our area, but the only one at an identified facility and the most severe one.

The Central Shenandoah Health District has 8 identified outbreaks and the Lord Fairfax Health District has 9.

Health department officials have not specified the majority of the locations of those outbreaks, given that Virginia state code requires permission to be granted by a facility for their information to be released to the media.

Of the state's total hospitalizations, at least 23 have been in the Central Shenandoah Health District. Of those, 12 are in Harrisonburg, 9 in Rockingham County, 1 in Waynesboro, and 1 in Augusta County.

In the Lord Fairfax Health District, there have been at least 21 hospitalizations. Eight of those have been in Shenandoah County.

Just to the east, there have been at least 66 cases in Albemarle County, 41 in Charlottesville, 8 in Greene County, and 5 in Nelson County. There have been 46 hospitalizations there.

In the part of West Virginia we cover, two cases have been confirmed in Pendleton County, three cases in Hardy County, and one case in Grant County.

The numbers provided here are a blend of the data provided by the Virginia Department of Health and case updates provided directly by our local health districts.

What about testing on a local level?

As of April 21, the Thomas Jefferson Health District had reported 2,394 total COVID-19 tests performed. The Lord Fairfax Health District had reported 2,294 tests, and the Central Shenandoah Health District had reported 1,771 tests.

For context, on a state level, of the COVID-19 tests administered, a little more than 15% of people tested have received positive results. Of the tests administered in the Central Shenandoah Health District, more than 23% of people tested have received positive results.

According to Dr. Greene, with the Lord Fairfax Health District, those testing numbers reported by the Virginia Department of Health may not include all the tests that have actually been conducted. He said tests performed by private labs aren't always reported to the state if they came back negative, so advised that those numbers generally don't show the full picture.

Dr. Forlano, the state's deputy health commissioner, said in a Wednesday briefing that the state data is meant to give at look at overall trends more than it's meant to show every single case.

Recovery

Wondering about the number of people who have recovered from COVID-19 in Virginia? Recovery information is not required to be sent to the Department of Health, so there is no accurate way to track that data for every single confirmed case.

But there is a way to track the number of patients who were hospitalized due to COVID-19 and have since been discharged – effectively tracking how many people have recovered from the most severe cases.

The Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association updates their own dashboard of data each day on hospital-specific statistics, including bed availability, ventilator usage, and more. Their online dashboard indicates that, as of April 21, at least 1,418 COVID-19 patients have been discharged from the hospital.

Unlike the VDH data that reports cumulative hospitalizations, their data on hospitalizations reflects people currently hospitalized for COVID-19 (whether with confirmed or pending cases), and that number is at 1,331.

The data used by the VDH to report cumulative hospitalizations is based on information reported in hospital claims. On the other hand, the numbers reported by the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association are based on a current census from hospitals, which provides a separate data set.

Timing of VDH data

The Virginia Department of Health COVID-19 website is updating with the latest statewide numbers at 9 a.m. each day.

The numbers that appear on that list are based on the cases that had been submitted to the department by 5 p.m. the previous day, so there is always some lag between when local health districts announce positive test results and when the department's numbers reflect those new results.

Why do some cases that have been confirmed in my area not appear on the state map?

The VDH numbers always lag behind the numbers reported by local health districts because of multiple factors.

First, they're based on the test results that healthcare providers and laboratories submitted to the department by 5 p.m. the previous day, so any positive cases announced in the late afternoon or evening, as well as on the day of the case count update, cannot appear on the department's list.

In addition, representatives for local health districts have told us their first priority when a new case is confirmed in their district is to work on tracing the contacts the patient had to let anyone who may have potentially been exposed to the virus know. With that as the priority, sometimes reporting of local cases to the Virginia Department of Health falls lower on the ladder and those results may not show up on the state tally for another day or two.

Plus, the exact locations of cases can sometimes appear differently on the state map than they do for local health districts that know their localities better.

Considering all of those factors, as an example, the April 2 state website update did not show one case in Staunton that the Central Shenandoah Health District confirmed to WHSV on March 29, though it had updated to show two cases confirmed in Augusta County at the same time.

There was also, for the first few weeks as cases began to rise in Virginia, a glitch in the system for updates from the Lord Fairfax Health District being sent to the Department of Health that caused some of their numbers to not display correctly. However, as of April 6, Dr. Greene, representing the district, said that issue had been resolved.

With those lapses between local case reporting and the VDH, while we report every morning on the latest statewide totals, we're also reporting local case numbers based on results directly confirmed to us by local health districts.

Reporting by local health districts

Our Virginia counties are primarily served by the Central Shenandoah Health District, which covers Augusta, Bath, Highland, Rockbridge and Rockingham counties, as well as the cities of Buena Vista, Harrisonburg, Lexington, Staunton and Waynesboro; and the Lord Fairfax Health District, which covers Shenandoah, Page, Frederick, Warren, and Clarke counties, as well as the city of Winchester.

Where are all the confirmed cases in our region?

According to the Virginia Department of Health's April 21 breakdown, 58,354 people in Virginia had been tested for the virus, with 9,630 positive results. The number of total tests, which had been growing, has plateaued over the past week.

The department's breakdown and location map, available to the public here, shows the number of cases confirmed each day, number of people tested, total hospitalizations, total deaths, and demographic breakdowns, as well as breakdowns by health district.

Here's a breakdown of cases for our region as of 9:15 a.m. on April 21, starting with our most local cases and then broken down by health districts across the state (Note that not all cases confirmed by local districts yet appear on the statewide list):

Central Shenandoah
• Augusta County - 28
• Buena Vista - 5
• Harrisonburg - 264
• Lexington - 3
• Rockbridge County - 5
• Rockingham County - 122
• Staunton - 10
• Waynesboro - 8
Outbreaks: 8, with 1 in a long-term care facility, 1 in a healthcare setting, 4 in congregate settings, 1 in a correctional facility, and 1 in an educational setting

Lord Fairfax
• Clarke County - 6
• Frederick County - 83
• Page County - 14
• Shenandoah County - 45
• Warren County - 26
• Winchester - 27
Outbreaks: 9, with 2 in long-term care facilities, 3 in healthcare settings, and 4 in congregate settings

Thomas Jefferson
• Albemarle County - 66
• Charlottesville - 41
• Fluvanna County - 68
• Greene County - 8
• Louisa County - 35
• Nelson County - 6
Outbreaks: 2, with 1 in a long-term care facility and 1 in a correctional facility

Rappahannock Rapidan
• Culpeper County - 65
• Fauquier County - 49
• Madison County - 12
• Orange County - 21
• Rappahannock - 1
Outbreaks: 1 in a healthcare setting

The statewide situation in Virginia

On April 15, Governor Ralph Northam announced an extension of his Executive Order 53, which closed many non-essential businesses and banned gatherings of more than 10 people. That order is now set to run through at least May 8.

On April 10, Gov. Northam announced plans to establish a nursing home task force, allow releases of inmates with less than year left in their sentences, and emphasized a need for volunteers.

On April 8, in Northam's daily coronavirus briefing, he announced that he was postponing statewide June primaries by two weeks, which moves them past the end date of the Stay at Home order, and recommending that the General Assembly postpone May's local elections until November, to be held at the same time as national elections.

On March 30, Gov. Northam issued a 'Stay at Home' order for all Virginians by signing Executive Order 55, effectively instructing all Virginians to stay home except for essential needs.

Virginia remains under a state of emergency until June 10, and Northam's order that closed many non-essential businesses, Executive Order 53, remains in place for that length of time as well.

That order is enforceable by law, so someone who hosts a gathering of more than 10 people can be charged with a Class 1 misdemeanor. You can learn more about what police enforcement of Northam's executive orders looks like here.

All elective surgeries have also been postponed in Virginia hospitals through a public health order signed by Northam on March 25, designed to help preserve critical equipment like ventilators and personal protective gear.

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