Covid cases in Arlington reported to health authorities have fallen to the lowest level in a nearly a year and a half.
The Virginia Dept. of Health is currently reporting a seven-day average of about 17 cases per day in Arlington, though VDH notes that it expects an elevated level of cases over the next two weeks “due to a delay in the transfer of case reports from laboratories to VDH.” Nonetheless, that’s the lowest case rate since the summer of 2021.
The county is also seeing a lower rate of Covid-related hospitalizations, with 5.2 per week per 100,000 in population, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. That’s half of the threshold from what the CDC considers a “low” Covid community level — which Arlington is currently in — to a “medium” level.
The decline in cases in Arlington since the start of January mirrors a similar fall from a seasonal peak in Covid cases statewide, down by nearly two thirds during the same timeframe.
While Covid has somewhat faded into the background of the general public consciousness, it is undoubtedly still spreading. In Arlington Public Schools, for instance, outbreaks continue happening with some regularity. Nearly 250 student cases have been reported in APS over the past 30 days, including 23 cases at Williamsburg Middle School and 14 cases at Abingdon Elementary.
Meanwhile, Virginia Hospital Center ER chair Dr. Mike Silverman, who has penned a weekly public Facebook post about Covid since shortly after the pandemic started, says he will be discontinuing the column next month.
“After much consideration, I want to let everyone know that I expect to have my last ‘weekly update’ on Friday, March 10,” Silverman wrote recently. “I wrote my first Friday Night Update on the second Friday in March 2020 and stopping on the second Friday in March three years later seems like a good run. I will write a proper goodbye and thank you with that update.”
Silverman’s Feb. 17 post also provided an update on long-term complications of Covid on the heart, lungs and other organs, also known as Long Covid.