Percentage of positive COVID tests continues to drop; hospitalizations up slightly

RICHMOND, Va.  – The Virginia Department of Health is reporting 557,896 total cases of COVID-19 across the commonwealth as of Thursday, February 18, 2021, dating to the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. That’s up 2,304 from the 555,592 reported Wednesday, a bigger increase than the 2,284 new cases reported from Tuesday to Wednesday.

Per the latest update from the state’s vaccine dashboard, 1,471,232 doses of vaccine have been administered in Virginia as of Thursday, up from Wednesday’s 1,427,750.

5,678,834 PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests have been conducted in Virginia as of Thursday, with an 8.6% positivity rate from those tests over the last week, down from the 8.9% reported Wednesday.

As of Thursday, there are 7,090 recorded coronavirus-related deaths in the commonwealth since the pandemic’s beginning, up from Wednesday’s 7,075.

1,828 people across Virginia are hospitalized as of Thursday with confirmed or test-pending cases of COVID-19, up five from Wednesday’s count of 1,823.

45,305 COVID patients have been released from hospitals in Virginia since the beginning of the pandemic. That’s according to the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association, which gets a daily report from hospitals around the commonwealth.

These hospital numbers are different from those reported by VDH, which only gathers hospitalization status at the time each case is investigated by VDH and is an under-representation of Virginia hospitalizations.

Any new confirmed cases from health departments throughout the state the rest of the day won’t show up until at least the following day on the state list, as the official numbers are only updated once a day, with a 5 p.m. cutoff each day for new cases to be reflected on the next day’s list.