Sobering COVID-19 Numbers Shared By Arlington Health Director

ARLINGTON, VA — Arlington County has hit its highest number of cases of COVID-19, the virus associated with the new coronavirus, since the pandemic began in March.

Dr. Reuben Varghese, Arlington's public health director, told the Arlington County Board during a Tuesday work session that there have been 6,573 new cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. Over the last week alone, the county has seen 501 new cases, the most reported in a single week.

"That's a very sobering number," Varghese said. "There could be numerous reasons for it, including more testing available and more demand for testing. ... Whatever the reason, it illustrates that we have a lot of cases in Arlington and this is what's happening in the region and in the nation."

Varghese shared a chart with board members showing that the number of positive cases in Arlington has been rising steadily since the first week of October. The gray bars on the right show that there is a lag time between disease reporting and laboratory test reporting.

"These are the materials we currently have," he said. "If more people got tested and there's some delay in that reporting, those numbers would be higher."

At this point, Arlington Public Health does not have data on people who may have been tested and traveled for the Thanksgiving holiday or may have been tested after traveling.

"We don't know the denominator of the people getting tested," Varghese said. "We only know that after the fact, and, unfortunately, with some of the new technology like the rapid testing, we may get the positives but we may not get the negatives for awhile."

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam issued an executive order in November imposting new restrictions on how many people can congregate together. Varghese said he does not have any evidence showing whether changes in particular behaviors have contributed to the uptick in cases since October.

"Obviously, we'd love to be able to see improvement in the numbers with time, that is often a lag indicator," he said. "We won't know what people are and are not doing until after the fact. We are going to have to prioritize case investigation because we did the same when we got to 306 cases back in April-May."

Even though Arlington is hiring more contact tracers, they won't be able to contact all of the cases in a timely fashion if the results come in well after the the fact.

"If it comes 10 days later, there's pretty much no ability to stop a bad case from having had an impact," Varghese said.

The Virginia Department of Health reported that there have been a total of 35 outbreaks of COVID-19 in the Arlington Health District as of Tuesday. Twenty-four of these outbreaks have been at long-term care facilities.

Get the latest updates on the new coronavirus in Virginia as they happen. Sign up for free news alerts and a newsletter in your Patch town.

While health officials continue to see outbreaks occurring in these faculties, a relatively small number of residents, many of whom are at high-risk for contracting COVID-19, have yet to test positive for the disease. One of the differences, according to Varghese, is that these facilities have been working very hard to maintain infection control.

"We continue to send teams out to observe at these long-term care facilities. However, as this continues, one of the concerns will be what will be the outcomes for those residents?" he said. "We should not take the lack of significant increases as a sign that it won't happen. We need to be vigilant. We believe those facilities are. But this is why the more we as people in our community can do the same mitigation strategies, it helps to reduce the load that's around us."

Arlington health officials continue to encourage residents to follow CDC guidelines regarding social distancing, wearing a face mask, and notifying friends and family if they have been diagnosed with COVID-19.

"Assume that everyone is asymptomatically infected," Varghese said.

Health officials also recommend that all organizations adopt the the following mitigation strategies to stem the spread of the disease:

1. Consistent and correct use of masks.
2. Social distancing to the largest extent possible
3. Hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette.
4. Cleaning and disinfection.
5. Contact tracing in collaboration with local health department.

Also see ...

Daily Coronavirus Case Average Above 3,000 In Virginia

Arlington Coronavirus Update: 3 Additional Deaths; 112 New Cases