Covid vaccines reach over 1 million Fairfax Health District residents

More than 1 million residents of the Fairfax Health District have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

The milestone in the roughly 19-month-long vaccination campaign came within the past week, according to the Fairfax County Health Department, which puts the current count at 1,001,144 people, or 84.6% of the population. The health district encompasses Fairfax County and the cities of Fairfax and Falls Church.

The breakdown by age group is as follows:

• 92.7% of people 18 and older
• 98.9% of 16-17 year olds
• 95.1% of 12-15 year olds
• 61.1% of 5-11 year olds

The dashboard doesn’t list a percentage for kids under 5, who became eligible for the shots last month.

As of today (Monday), 910,685 district residents are fully vaccinated — 76.9% of the population, including 85.1% of adults.

The Virginia Department of Health reports slightly higher vaccination numbers, showing that 1,004,820 residents in Fairfax County alone have gotten at least one dose.

“We get our vaccination coverage data from the VA Immunization Information System (VIIS),” a county health department spokesperson told FFXnow by email. “VDH gets additional data on Fairfax County residents who receive their vaccination in other states and therefore don’t have the data included in VIIS.”

For the sake of consistency, FFXnow has generally reported vaccination data from the county, which provides information for the whole district and for more specific age groups.

COVID-19 cases in the district continue to stay fairly steady, with no clear indication of a coming surge or decline.

With 236 new cases reported today, the district is averaging 423.3 cases per day for the past week, per VDH data. The seven-day average has hovered between 370 and 455 cases since June 10.

The district’s testing positivity rate is still elevated at 21% — up from the 16.1% recorded on June 18.

Reporting 270.06 cases and 6.3 new hospital admissions per 100,000 residents, Fairfax County is still seeing a “medium” level of COVID-19 in the community, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 4.2% of staffed, inpatient hospital beds are currently being used by patients with the disease.

As of last Wednesday (July 13), the county saw an estimated 72 people admitted to a hospital for COVID-19 in the preceding week, a 16.7% increase from the previous seven days.

In total, there have been 222,694 COVID-19 cases, 4,730 hospitalizations, and 1,553 deaths among Fairfax Health District residents since the pandemic spread to the area in March 2020.