In an updated daily report on COVID-19 cases, the Virginia Department of Health Thursday reduced the number of new cases in Floyd County from two to one from Wednesday’s listing. The two additional deaths remain unchanged but the case number change gives the county three new cases from last weekend through Thursday.
Floyd, who had averaged 2 or more new cases and some more deaths in the first three months of this year, had no new COVID-19 cases or deaths since the first of April, but that streak ended this past weekend with two new cases, then one more infection and two deaths in Wednesday’s report by the Virginia Department of Health.
The reduction is listed as a “data error.”
To remind us that COVID remains a serious threat, Virginia’s new case count continues to hover around 1,000 a day with 1,217 new infections reported Wednesday while deaths topped 20,000 later last week. In the US, deaths are closing in on 1 million deaths from 82.4 million cases.
COVID-19 death is down but not out.
A federal judge in Florida ordered an end to the mask mandate for those traveling on airliners and other forms of shared transportation. The move concerns the Centers for Disease Control, which still recommends masks for public shared travel and large gatherings.
It remained unclear to what extent local transportation agencies would seek to keep their mandates in place. Earlier in the day, before the administration official said the T.S.A. would not enforce the mandate, several state and local transit agencies across the country suggested they would keep their mask requirements for now.
Still, governments and businesses across the nation have largely loosened precautions, and now new known coronavirus cases are sharply rising again. When the C.D.C. extended its mask rule last week, it cited a desire to assess the potential severity of the Omicron subvariant known as BA.2, which recently became the dominant version among new U.S. cases. (On Monday, the city of Philadelphia reinstated a mask mandate in response, becoming the first major city to do so.)
President Biden had called on the C.D.C. to impose a mask mandate for travelers shortly after his inauguration, and the agency did so starting on Feb. 2, 2021. It extended that mandate several times. In July 2021, the Health Freedom Defense Fund, a Wyoming-based advocacy group, filed a lawsuit challenging its legality.
—New York Times
With three new cases in a county where no new ones were reported for three weeks, Floyd County’s new infections put its total at 2,556. The two new deaths bring the toll to 49.
The pandemic is not over. Neither is the need to wear masks.
(Updated on April 21 to reflect the change in case numbers for Floyd County by VDH).