More than 6M doses of vaccine administered in Virginia; hospitalizations down

RICHMOND, Va.  – The Virginia Department of Health is reporting 657,154 total cases of COVID-19 across the commonwealth as of Wednesday, April 28, 2021, dating to the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. That’s up 1,120 from the 656,034 reported Tuesday, a bigger increase than the 1,105 new cases reported from Monday to Tuesday.

Per the latest update from the state’s vaccine dashboard, 6,018,570 doses of vaccine have been administered in Virginia as of Wednesday, up from 5,968,441 Tuesday. 43.5% of Virginians have received at least one dose, while 29.4% are fully vaccinated.

6,994,812 PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests have been conducted in Virginia as of Wednesday, with a 5.1% positivity rate from those tests over the last week, down from 5.2% reported Tuesday.

As of Wednesday, there are 10,735 recorded coronavirus-related deaths in the commonwealth since the pandemic’s beginning, up from 10,724 reported Tuesday.

988 people across Virginia were hospitalized as of Wednesday with confirmed or test-pending cases of COVID-19, down from 1.009 reported Tuesday. 54,492 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.

In the Near Southwest Region (which includes Carilion, Centra, LewisGale, Sovah, and Salem VA facilities) as of Wednesday, 107 COVID-19 patients are hospitalized, with 33 in intensive care and 18 on ventilator.

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.