Fairfax County has now seen close to a month of plummeting COVID-19 case rates.
With 267 new cases reported today (Monday), the Fairfax Health District, which includes the cities of Fairfax and Falls Church, is averaging 448 cases per day for the past week, a steep decline from the seven-day average of 2,590 cases recorded when the omicron variant-fueled surge peaked on Jan. 13.
Fairfax County Public Schools will continue requiring face masks after notching a victory in its lawsuit against Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order prohibiting school mask mandates.
Arlington County Circuit Court Judge Louise DiMatteo granted a temporary injunction today (Friday) to Fairfax County and the six other school boards suing Youngkin, allowing them to enforce their mask requirements until a permanent ruling is made.
The Fairfax County Health Department will stop investigating every COVID-19 case to identify close contacts who may have been exposed to the disease.
County staff will instead focus their contact-tracing efforts on outbreaks and cases in high-risk settings, such as long-term care and healthcare facilities, the department announced today (Wednesday).
The omicron wave continues to subside in Fairfax County, which is now seeing only a third as many COVID-19 cases as it was half a month ago.
The county is averaging 753 new cases a day for the past week, compared to 2,520 cases at the current surge’s height on Jan. 13. The caseload is still above last winter’s peak of 697 cases on Jan. 17, 2021, but at this rate, it could drop below that level within a week.
With a second week of consistently declining cases, Fairfax County’s current, omicron variant-fueled Covid wave has receded closer to the levels seen last winter.
The Fairfax Health District, including the cities of Fairfax and Falls Church, reported 607 new cases today (Monday). With 845 cases added yesterday (Sunday), it’s the first time since Dec. 20 and 21 that there have been fewer than 1,000 new cases on consecutive days.
(Updated at 5:25 p.m.) Fairfax County Public Schools and six other school divisions, most of them in Northern Virginia, have sued to stop Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s order that makes face masks optional in schools.
As first reported by The Washington Post, the lawsuit was filed in Arlington Circuit Court this morning (Monday), asking the court for an injunction to stop Youngkin’s order from being enforced.
The peak of this winter’s omicron variant surge might be in the rearview mirror for Fairfax County.
After hitting an all-time high of 2,520 cases on Thursday (Jan. 13), the county’s COVID-19 caseload has dropped sharply over the past few days to a current weekly average of 1,919 new cases per day, according to Virginia Department of Health data.
A new COVID-19 testing site is coming to Fairfax County, potentially easing up the current scramble for tests amid a surge in cases locally and statewide.
The Virginia Department of Health will open a community testing center tomorrow (Saturday) at the Fairfax County Government Center. The site will be set up in large tent in parking lot B, which is in the southwest corner of the complex.
Fairfax County Public Library has received a new shipment of rapid COVID-19 testing kits, but supplies are extremely limited, even compared to previous rounds of distribution.
Exactly 300 kits each will be available tomorrow (Wednesday) at the county’s Reston, George Mason, Chantilly, and Sherwood regional branches, FCPL announced this morning (Tuesday).
Fairfax County has a new single-day record for COVID-19 infections.
According to the Virginia Department of Health, the county reported 3,463 new cases on Saturday (Jan. 8), surpassing the previous daily record of 3,111 cases set on Dec. 31. Before Dec. 22, the county had only seen more than 1,000 cases in a day once — on Jan. 17, 2021.
