Virginia – For several months now, Americans are living restriction-free lives, and people are getting used to living with the virus. Shopping malls full of customers during the Thanksgiving weekend were another proof that our lives are getting back to normal as people now think of COVID more like the flu than a dangerous disease.
The spread of the virus, however, is still a thing, and thousands of Americans are getting infected every day. Although hospitalization and death rates have significantly declined in recent months, people are advised to avoid crowded indoor settings when possible and maintain an up-to-date COVID vaccine schedule. The majority of the hospitals across the nation are already overwhelmed with patients due to the extremely high number of flu cases, which, combined with the increasing number of COVID-19 and RSV cases recently, are a real struggle for doctors.
Almost everyone now has immunity against COVID-19, either through vaccination or recovery and this is the main reason why many health experts are confident that the country won’t see another major surge in cases in the upcoming months. The New York Times trackershows a 56% increase in new cases in the last two weeks nationwide, but the current situation is still considered stable.
The number of new COVID-19 cases is also on the rise in Virginia. According to the Virginia Department of Health, a total of 11,037 new cases were reported statewide last week, which is 1,577 new cases per day on average. The average daily newly reported cases over the last week are 6.81% higher than the previous seven-day period, when the state added 1,476 per day on average.
On Monday, Dec. 13, the health department reported a total of 1,246 cases, but the number of cases is usually lower on Monday due to the lower number of tests conducted over the weekend.
More than 6.3 million people in Virginia are fully vaccinated, representing 73.5% of the state’s population. Across the nation, more than 228 million Americans, or 68.9% of the population, have completed the primary series of the vaccines so far.
Since the start of the pandemic, nearly 100 million cases have been reported nationwide, and more than 1 million people have died as a result of the virus. As of Monday, Virginia is reporting 2,167,396 cases of the coronavirus across the Commonwealth since March 2020.
For more details and data, please visit the Virginia Department of Health website.
