Virginia, Prince William County Report Highest New COVID-19 Cases Over Christmas

Posted

Virginia Department of Health graph of COVID-19 cases in Prince William County as of Dec. 29, 2020.

The number of newly reported COVID-19 cases has reached an all-time high in Virginia on Dec. 24 when 4,782 new cases were reported according to the Virginia Department of Health. On Dec. 29, Virginia saw 4,112 new cases, a 7-Day average of 3,688 and a 12.2% positivity rate. Virginia has seen approximately 336K total reported cases of COVID-19.

In Prince William County, the total case count rose to 25,057 with 1,214 total hospitalizations and 251 total deaths as a result of the virus. The county showed a 16.4% positivity rate over the last 14 days, which is much higher than the state overall. In Prince William County, the COVID-19 mortality* rate is approximately 1%. Mortality rates differ greatly among age groups and can rise to 15% for those 85 and older. 

Prince William County saw its highest number of cases reported on Christmas Day. On Dec. 25, 397 new cases were reported. On Dec. 29, 365 new cases were reported. Prince William County has a 7-day average of 295.

Manassas City has seen a total of 2,850 cases, 147 hospitalizations and 30 deaths. Manassas Park has seen a total of 920 recorded cases, 62 hospitalizations and 8 deaths.

Core Indicators for Prince William Schools Reaches Highest Risk

CDC Risk of Transmission in Schools categories.

According to COVID-19 Dashboard used by school divisions, Prince William County Schools is at Moderate-High Risk of Transmission in Schools, although it falls within “Highest Risk” for the first two core metrics.

Looking at the First Tier Core Indicators, Prince William is Highest Risk with 16.4% positivity rate during the span of the last 14 days and the total number of new cases per 100,000 persons at 774.8 per the last 14 days.

Prince William also had a High Risk of 25.2% increase in new cases per 100.000 population over the last 7-days. However, Prince William is at Moderate Risk in that only 83% of its hospital beds are occupied, and 17.2% of hospital beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients.

Prince William County Schools website lists PWCS as “Moderate-High Risk” in terms of contracting COVID-19 via the schools.  As recommended by the CDC, the school divisions combine the first two core indicators with the school division’s self-assessed measure of their ability to implement five key mitigation strategies (masks, social distancing, hand hygiene/respiratory etiquette, cleaning/disinfection, and contact tracing in collaboration with local health departments).

Within the “Moderate and High Risk” category the CDC recommends that schools only open buildings to PreK-third grade and most at-risk learners while adopting mitigation strategies. According to PWCS's current plans, second and third grades will return on Jan. 12. Fourth and fifth grades will return on Jan. 26.

Prince William County Schools has not made plans to alter its return-to-building plans. The school division has not singled out a particular factor for slowing return to school plans, but said the administration plans to evaluate the plans holistically. PWCS communications department is off for the Winter Break and not available for comment. The school board's next meeting is Jan. 6, 2021.

All COVID-19 data in this article is derived from the Virginia Department of Health unless otherwise noted. 

*This item was corrected from a previous draft of the article.

christmas, coronavirus, covid-19, dec-19, december-2020, featured, high-risk, highest-risk, new-cases, numbers, positivity-rate, prince-william-county, prince-william-county-schools, recorded-cases, vdh, virginia, virginia-department-of-health