As I live and work in Northern Virginia, just a few miles outside of Washington, DC, the local situation is of interest to me, as I suspect it is to a few other readers. I will be maintaining these updates on Wednesdays for a while. Again, all the data is from the Johns Hopkin’s website (which I gather is also maintained in the DC area), as of 10:32:27 AM: Johns Hopkins CSSE
The DC area is rather sprawling, with over 5 million people scattered across DC, Virginia and Maryland. Let me list the presence of virus by location. I list the number of cases from last week followed by the number of cases this week and then the current number of reported deaths. Population is the 2018 estimate from Wikipedia:
……………………….….Population…last week…this week…Deaths
Washington D.C…………..702,445…..5,322….…6,584……….350
Arlington, VA…………..…..237,521…..1,169……1,416…………66
Alexandria VA………….…160,530………983……1,240…………30
Fairfax County, VA……..1,150,795……4,834……6,470……….253
Falls Church, VA……..…….14,772…..…..36…….….37……….….4
Fairfax City, VA……..………24,574………..33….……40……….…3
Loudoun County, VA………406,850….…998…..1,210………….35
Prince Williams C., VA….…468,011…..2,223…..3,078……….…58
Manassas…………………….41,641……..289….…430…………….3
Manassas Park………….…..17,307…..…..96…..…139……………3
Stafford Country, VA………149,960…..…308……..396…………….4
Fredericksburg, VA…….…..29,144……..….45………..66…………..0
Montgomery C., MD….…1,052,567…..…5,790……7,283………422
Prince Georges C., MD….909,308….……8,135….10,072………389
Total……….…….…….…5,365,425….…30,261…..38,461……1,620
The number of cases was doubling at every locale each week for the first three weeks I was tracking this. Thee weeks ago it only went up by a little more than half (actually 58%). Two week ago went up by half (actually 50%) and last week is went up less than half (actually 39%). This week it has gone up only 27%, although this is still over 8,000 new cases. This is not anywhere near zero. So, a positive downward trend, although painfully slow.
The Mortality Rate for the area is 4.21%, which is high. It either means lots of vulnerable people, or the number of cases of infection are being significantly underreported. The population known to be infected is 0.72%. or one confirmed case for every 140 people. It may be that over 2% of the area has been infected.
This week the governor of Virginia (who is actually a medical doctor) extended the shut-down in Northern Virginia until 29 May. Certainly needed. He gave a list of locales that were under that order, and it included every place mentioned above except Fredericksburg. Does this mean I can drive down to Fredericksburg and have a beer?
The Washington DC statistic area according to some also includes Warren, Clarke, Fauquier, and Spotsylvania Counties in Virginia, Jefferson County in West Virginia, Frederick, Howard, Charles and Calvert Counties in Maryland. I rarely go to these places and they were not listed in the Governor of Virginia’s order extending the lock-down in Northern Virginia. Of interest to me is Albemarle County, VA with 124 confirmed cases (110 last week) and 4 deaths, and Charlottesville, VA which has 68 confirmed cases (64 last week) and 2 deaths. Montgomery County, VA has 66 cases (61 last week) and 1 death. These two areas are the home of UVA and Virginia Tech, two large universities located in a more rural environment.
Chris, if you traveled south to Fredericksburg to have that beer then that jurisdiction might get added to the governor’s list. Catch-22 (or is that Catch-19 ) – :