HERE’S WHERE WE ARE ON PATH TO REOPENING STATE
A 14-day downward trend — and more testing.
That’s what Gov. Ralph Northam wants to see happen to the coronavirus in Virginia before the state eases into the first stage of recovery, where businesses can reopen with firm safety restrictions.
That means two weeks with hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients on the decline, and a steady drop in the percentage of coronavirus tests each day that come back positive.
His guidelines, released April 24 at a news conference in Richmond, mirror those laid out by the Centers for Disease Control and President Donald Trump for reopening states. Once the criteria are met, Northam said Virginia can move onto phase one of a three-part reopening plan he’s calling “Forward Virginia.”
Northam, a Democrat, has said Virginians will need to continue staying at home and practicing social distancing while the state ramps up testing and ensures there’s enough personal protective equipment to handle any surge that may come as businesses reopen and people begin venturing out.
But we’re not there yet. Here’s a look at the trends for hospitalizations, testing and the percentage of positive cases:
The number of current hospitalizations rose slowly over most of the past week, increasing every day until Thursday.
From April 20 to Wednesday, hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients increased from 1,296 to 1,566, about a 20% bump, according to data from the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association. They dipped again on Thursday and Friday, falling back to 1,431.
The number of those patients in the ICU or on ventilators has slightly dropped over that same time. Northam has said he also wants to see enough capacity in ICUs before moving to phase one.
The hospital association first started reporting coronavirus hospitalizations on April 6, when it said 1,194 patients were receiving care in Virginia. Those figures include people who have tested positive — which have risen — and those awaiting results, which have decreased.
Virginia is still not near its total healthcare capacity.
Only 20% of the state’s total ventilators are in use — and most aren’t for COVID-19 patients — meaning there are roughly 2,400 such machines still available throughout the state. There are 5,181 available hospital beds, and just two of the state’s hospitals are experiencing difficulty in obtaining PPE in the next three days, according to the hospital group.
Virginia’s testing rate ranked 37 out of the 50 states ... which experts described as a big problem.
The changes in the percentage of positive cases aren’t as clear, but appear to be trending downward, though there was a spike on Tuesday. The state health department reported 1,055 cases on Friday and 14,805 new tests — by far the highest single-day increase in tests. That comes out to just 7% of tests coming back positive, the lowest percentage since March 24.
On Tuesday, there were another 804 COVID-19 cases and 2,165 new tests, which comes out to about 31% of tests returning positive. That was the highest figure since April 21, when roughly 40% of tests came back positive. Most days in between that period saw less than 20% of tests come back positive, and there appears to be a downward trend since April 23.
Because the percentage can change significantly between days, The Virginian-Pilot also used a seven-day rolling average to look at trends over time.
Those figures are The Pilot’s best estimate of the percentage of positive tests, due to limitations in what data the Virginia Department of Health is reporting. Starting on April 5, the state included both confirmed and probable cases in its daily updates, though they didn’t distinguish between the two until April 21. Probable COVID-19 cases don’t require a positive test.
And the agency still doesn’t break out its new cases each day along those two categories. It only separates the total cases along those lines. For example: Of the state’s 16,901 cases as of Friday, 16,109 are confirmed and 792 are probable.
The Virginian-Pilot included both probable and confirmed cases in its analysis, to keep the data consistent over this time period. This means the percentage of people testing positive is a bit higher than the precise figure, but the trend is likely the same.
A key to reopening Virginia — and keeping it open — is tied to officials’ ability to ramp up the state’s testing capacity.
But since Virginia announced its first case of the novel coronavirus on March 7, the commonwealth’s testing has fallen behind nearly every other state in the country.
On March 24, Virginia’s testing rate ranked 37 out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia — which experts described as a big problem.
And the issue has only gotten worse.
On Monday, Virginia’s testing rate — the percentage of the state population that’s been tested — trailed every state and D.C. other than Kansas and Arizona, according to a Virginian-Pilot analysis of data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project, an independent group that pulls testing numbers released by each state’s department of health.
Virginia is, of course, testing more people today than it was a month ago. The state health department reported 105,648 completed tests on Friday, which means about 1,240 of every 100,000 people in Virginia have been tested — a bit over 1% of the state’s population. Officials are reporting an average of 5,200 new tests each day. At the beginning of the month, only 15,300 people had been tested in total.
Northam hasn’t explained why — although his administration is competing with other states to get the testing supplies — Virginia has lagged behind other states in obtaining tests. Instead, when asked about the low testing rate, he tends to reiterate the challenge in getting testing supplies, including nasal swabs, and highlights the steps the state has taken to increase testing over six weeks, including getting universities, hospitals and private labs to do more testing alongside the state labs.
The governor also said the tests were “cumbersome” — so cumbersome that many health care providers were choosing not to do it, until Northam’s administration sent a letter to physicians encouraging them to perform the tests.
His response hasn’t fared well with Republican lawmakers.
“If other states face the same limitations, how have they managed to test thousands more of their citizens than the Commonwealth?” House minority leader Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, said in a statement Tuesday.
Those same lawmakers have been calling for Northam to create a plan and timeline for reopening, saying Virginia’s economy has suffered enough.
But Northam has repeatedly said the economic crisis won’t be solved until the health crisis is addressed.