The D.C. region headed into the Christmas holiday in the throes of the worst coronavirus surge the area has ever witnessed, in terms of the number of people coming down with the virus.
In a year when many people had hoped to resume treasured holiday traditions that were scuttled last year by the pandemic, some found themselves instead canceling plans again this week.
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In the District, more than one out of every hundred Washingtonians has tested positive this week alone — a staggering total accounting for more than 10 percent of the total coronavirus cases throughout the pandemic in just one week.
A week ago, when the city reported 508 new cases in a single day, it set a pandemic record. Since then, that record has been shattered almost every day. The latest mark, on Thursday, was 1,904 new cases in one day.
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Maryland set its own record Thursday, with 6,869 new cases. Virginia reported 6,473, and although its case rate is climbing, it is not at a record-breaking level like its neighbors. Many public testing sites will be closed over the next two days because of the Christmas holiday.
Tracking coronavirus deaths, cases and vaccinations in D.C., Maryland and Virginia
Maryland officials said coronavirus patients are making up a growing number of hospitalizations. The state recently passed 1,500 covid-19 hospitalizations, a number that triggered a state-required pandemic action plan including reducing non-urgent and elective surgeries and increasing beds.
The D.C. Health Department said that just 2.4 percent of people with the virus in the District have needed hospital treatment lately, a much lower rate than even the recent months when much of the population was vaccinated.
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People who got sick this week could worsen next week, but regional leaders remained tentatively optimistic that cases caused by omicron would prove milder than the earlier variants.
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In Howard County, the rising case levels led County Executive Calvin Ball (D) to reinstate a mask mandate inside all businesses and facilities open to the public and on public transportation effective 5 p.m. Sunday.
And as the Fairfax County Health Department confronted its huge caseload, the agency announced Wednesday that it would no longer call every person who tests positive for the virus and all of their close contacts. Instead, contact tracers will focus on group settings such as nursing homes and schools, as well as on clustered outbreaks of the virus.
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The rising number of cases in schools has prompted frustration among some parents and students in the District, who have complained recently of underreporting. In response, Schools Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee announced this week that the district would “expedite notifications of positive reported cases at schools.”
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But some critics of the District’s policies on releasing data said they were not convinced that things would improve and data would be released more quickly to protect families and school communities.
Mayor Muriel E. Bower (D), who has control of the schools, was asked at a Wednesday news conference whether covid-19 cases in D.C. schools are being underreported. She responded: “I don’t think so. But there could be some lag in terms of the anecdotal experience people have and what gets actually reported, and the time in which it actually gets reported centrally. That would be my guess if there’s any discrepancy.” When asked if she would investigate the issue, she said: “We’re looking into schools every day.”
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D.C. Public Schools’ practice has been to create official statements on each reported covid-19 case before the public is alerted, which takes time and personnel. School principals do not have the authority to notify families as soon as they learn of a positive case, and parents have complained that the real tally is being underreported.
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According to a DCPS spokesman, once a case is reported to a school, principals or designated school staff identify and alert potential close contacts and a member of the DCPS coronavirus response team works to confirm details. At that point, the data is sent to the D.C. Health Department, and once all close contacts are notified, a community missive is prepared and sent by email and posted online.
Ferebee’s announcement said that going forward, “close contact notifications will be sent to all students and staff in the classroom of a positive reported case if more detailed contact tracing cannot be completed expediently,” and that community notifications “will now be modified to note the total number of new cases reported within a school building.”
A DCPS spokesman said that notifications will continue throughout the holidays.
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But some critics of the former policy said they didn’t understand the changes.
Charlotte Guy, 18, a senior at Woodrow Wilson High School and co-chief editor of the student newspaper, the Beacon, said she tested positive for the coronavirus this month and it took about a week for an official announcement of her case.
“It’s frustrating,” she said. “It’s not the [school] administration’s fault, but a lot of the blame falls on them because people don’t know its DCPS doing it.” As for Ferebee’s changes, she said, “I don’t see what’s really changing.”
The Beacon has been writing about the issue, and reported that on Tuesday, interim principal Gregory Bargeman said more than more than 50 cases had been reported to the administration, “but due to a lag in DCPS’s case-reporting system, the school community was only notified of 17 of them.” On Wednesday evening the school system’s coronavirus response team sent an email to the Wilson community reporting 57 cases at the school, the Beacon said.
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Bargeman did not respond on Thursday to a query from The Washington Post. The school system began its winter break Thursday.
Valerie Jablow, parent of a D.C. school student and a school activist, sent a letter to D.C. Council members Tuesday complaining about the problem. She said that her daughter’s school, Duke Ellington School of the Arts, had canceled several in-person events last week because of rising caseloads, but the only official notification she received was on Dec. 9, about a person last present on campus on Dec. 1.
Asked about the system’s planned changes, Jablow told The Post that she thought the District was already doing what Ferebee announced and doesn’t understand the new changes.
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“I have no idea what this means — except that it seems like we’re getting less, not more, information without any promise of timeliness and granularity in reporting,” she said in an email.
She also wrote: “There was nothing about empowering principals to speak about the cases they see in their schools. Some do — and others do not. It’s entirely dependent on factors that have ‘nothing’ to do with public safety and everything to do with fear and politics, neither of which makes for healthy students or families.”
Karina Elwood contributed to this report.