New coronavirus infections in the Washington region continued to steadily decline Friday, a sign that the worst of the omicron surge is over despite a lagging spike in covid-19 deaths in Virginia, public health experts said.
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The region’s weekly average for new cases stood at 8,582 Friday, the lowest combined total for the District, Maryland and Virginia since just before Christmas, when the highly transmissible omicron variant sent area residents in search of coronavirus tests that were again in short supply and to overcrowded emergency rooms as beleaguered hospital systems pleaded for people with mild cases to stay home.
Now, with hospitalizations also dropping, Maryland ended a 30-day state of emergency Friday that included deploying 1,000 members of the state National Guard to help local hospitals deal with the extra strain on resources.
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The state has the lowest rate of coronavirus cases in the country, at roughly 32 new infections per 100,000 residents, according to a Brown University School of Public Health global dashboard, Gov. Larry R. Hogan’s (R) office said Friday.
“With swift and decisive actions and the vigilance of Marylanders, I’m pleased to report that we have turned back another dangerous variant of covid-19,” Hogan said during his State of the State address Thursday night.
“Our long-term public health response will continue. Our surge capacity, our testing and tracing operations, our vaccine clinics, all those things will remain in place as part of the ongoing operations of government,” Hogan said.
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The same Brown University tracker shows the District with the country’s second-lowest weekly infection rate at about 37 new cases per 100,000 residents. Virginia’s seven-day rate was higher up on the list with 85 new infections per 100,000 residents.
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Virginia has had more covid-19 deaths than its nearby jurisdictions during the omicron surge, reporting a seven-day average of 82 new fatalities Friday. Maryland had a seven-day average of 38 new deaths, while the District had an average of one new death.
Virginia health officials said most of the new fatalities occurred in January, in part because of the lag in reporting that includes waiting for death certificates to come in after the patient dies in either a hospital or at home.
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But the state’s higher rate compared to Maryland and the District still shows how parts of Virginia have been hit hard by the recent coronavirus surge.
Amanda Castel, an epidemiologist at George Washington University, said lower vaccination rates in some areas, plus a lax attitude toward preventive measures such as wearing a mask indoors, could play a role in higher case rates and deaths in Virginia.
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The commonwealth has been the location of ongoing battles over coronavirus measures. After Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) issued an executive order last month that gave parents permission to opt their children out of local school mask mandates, 70 school districts said they wouldn’t comply.
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On Friday, an Arlington judge issued a temporary restraining order barring enforcement of Youngkin’s directive in a case brought by several school districts.
Meanwhile, the office of Attorney General Jason S. Miyares (R) added another element to those battles by including Virginia in a multistate lawsuit against the Biden administration over vaccine mandates for health-care workers.
Kyle Enfield, medical director at the University of Virginia Medical Center’s intensive care unit, said the state’s southwestern and northwestern areas continue to struggle with new infections, leading to more hospitalizations that have placed a burden on local health systems.
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“I would say our health-care systems during this wave have been strained more than we’ve seen in the past,” Enfield said.
That has been particularly true in areas with low vaccination rates, where the majority of patients in intensive care are people who have not received a coronavirus shot.
The Ballad Health system, whose hospitals primarily serve southwest Virginia and northeast Tennessee, said nearly all of its 441 patients hospitalized with covid-19 are unvaccinated. This week, Ballad had 94 covid-19 patients inside intensive care units, with 73 percent of them on ventilators.
Molly Luton, Ballad’s vice president of marketing and communications, said the omicron surge also has hit hospital staff hard, with 850 employees out sick with covid-19 the last week of January, but most of them were vaccinated and didn’t need to be hospitalized.
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With nurses retiring or just leaving out of exhaustion nearly two years into the pandemic, Ballad is relying on 500 travel nurses who’ve come in from other areas to help with treating patients while other hospital staff, including executives, have pitched in with cleaning rooms and other tasks.
“Our team is tired. They’re exhausted,” Luton said. Those who’ve had to call in sick “are upset. They feel like they’ve let down their team.”
David Goodfriend, the health director in Loudoun County, said the region isn’t likely to fully emerge from this wave until sometime next month. “Even without omicron, we expected a winter surge because this is a cold weather virus,” he said.
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Now, he said, area public health officials are bracing for whatever additional impact comes if omicron’s close cousin, known as BA. 2, makes its way to the region from where it is spreading in Europe and Asia. Though that variant isn’t believed to be potent, it’s also highly transmissible.
“The challenge is if it becomes more prevalent there, it may arrive here as we come off the omicron surge,” Goodfriend said. If that happens, “it may slow the descent.”