By Carol J. Bova

Steve Haner said in a recent comment on “Nursing Home PPE Shortages and Deaths Still Rising,” published on baconsrebellion.com, “I can’t seem to tell on the VDH site where the new outbreaks are. Are they following the pattern with cases, which are surging in Eastern and SW Virginia, but very diminished now in NoVA and fairly low in Central VA?”

The only way to tell is to download the Outbreak Dataset and sort by Health District, Long Term Care Facility (LTCF) outbreaks, and date reported, then sort into regions.  Since VDH doesn’t give case numbers or deaths in this dataset, we can only compare number of outbreaks by date. (The Outbreaks tab on the COVID-19 Dashboard only gives the total number of cases from all five categories of outbreaks.)

In the past month, 24 of 35 Health Districts had increases in outbreaks.

The 11 that did not were Alexandria, Eastern Shore, Lord Fairfax, Loudon, New River, Norfolk, Prince William, Roanoke, Southside, West Piedmont, Western Tidewater.

By Health Regions:
Central:       Increases in 6 of 7 Health Districts
Eastern:      Increases in 6 of 9 Health Districts
Northern:    Increases in 2 of 5 Health Districts
Northwest:  Increases in 4 of 5 Health Districts
Southwest: Increases in 6 of 9 Health Districts

Virginia Department of Health (VDH) first published outbreaks by Health District and report date on May 9, 2020; starting numbers occurred before that date.

Long Term Care Facility Outbreaks by Health Districts