A second COVID-19 death was listed for Gloucester County on Wednesday morning, but that is not when the person, a male in his 60s, died. According to Lisa Laurier, Population Health Manager for the Three Rivers Health District, the man’s death occurred in May.
Laurier said that there is an ongoing review of deaths that occur at the state level, and that a review of the Gloucester resident’s vital records and death certificate had determined that the novel coronavirus was a contributing factor in his death. She said she had no further information she could share on the man.
The number of coronavirus cases in Gloucester and Mathews continued to trend upward this week, with 138 cases in Gloucester and 12 cases in Mathews as of Wednesday morning. These numbers were an increase of 26 new cases for Gloucester and three for Mathews.
The number of people hospitalized for the illness locally remained stable this week, with just one new hospitalization in Gloucester, for a total of 12, and two hospitalizations in Mathews, a number that has remained the same for over two months. There have been no deaths from the virus in Mathews.
The number of cases increased in Middlesex this week, as well, with four new cases, for a total of 25. Two people in the county have been hospitalized for the illness, and one person has died.
Across the Three Rivers Health District, there were 59 additional cases this week, for a total of 956 as of Wednesday morning. Sixty-six people have been hospitalized for the illness in the 10-county district, and 15 people have died, with three of those deaths occurring during the past week.
Statewide, the number of cases increased during the past week by 7,600, for a total on Wednesday morning of 87,993 cases. Hospitalizations rose from 7,351 last week to 7,738 this week, or an increase of 387, and there were 74 additional deaths, for a total number statewide of 2,125.
Thus far, 1,073,463 COVID-19 PCR tests have been conducted in Virginia, 122,289 of them during the past week. Three Rivers Health District has conducted 17,486 tests, with 1,778 of them conducted during the past week. Statewide, the rate of positive tests as of Wednesday morning was 7.1 percent statewide and just 4.2 percent in the Three Rivers Health District.
According to the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association, there were 1,350 people in hospitals across Virginia on Wednesday morning who were either positive for COVID-19 or suspected of having the illness but were awaiting the results of their tests. Of those hospitalized, 276 were in the ICU and 155 were on ventilators.
Thus far, 11,650 hospital patients with confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been treated in hospitals and discharged.
The total number of ventilators on-hand in hospitals as of Wednesday morning was 3,043, according to the VHHA, and 668 of those were in use. There were 3,647 inpatient hospital beds available across the state on Wednesday morning, with 3,695 beds added under Executive Order 51.
ICU occupancy statewide was 79 percent on Wednesday morning, according to the website, but an additional 908 surge beds reduced the occupancy rate to 53 percent.