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Virginia Overview

Data Reporting Assessment (Learn more about data quality assessments)

Last updated

When Virginia reports no data, several days of data, or unusual data (such as decreases in values that should increase), our volunteers note it here on the date the anomaly occurred. We also note here changes in our own methodology that affect the data.

The Recovered data point we report for Virginia reflects the number of COVID-19 patients discharged from the hospital and therefore does not represent the total number of people who have recovered from COVID-19, since many people with COVID are never hospitalized.

On February 22, 2021 through March 1, 2021, Virginia announced that the Virginia Department of Health was processing 2021 death certificates resulting from a “post-holiday surge of COVID-19 cases”. As a result, new deaths from this time period may be larger than usual. We urge caution when interpreting data from this period, and encourage the use of 7 and 14-day averages as more reliable metrics.

On January 31, 2021 through February 1, 2021, Virginia noted that “Surveillance system upgrades occurring on Saturday, January 30, 2021, will affect the data on the COVID-19 Cases & Testing Dashboards on January 31 and February 1, 2021. A decrease in the number of cases and tests reported on January 31, and an increase in the number of cases and tests reported on February 1 is anticipated because of these upgrades”.

On January 12, 2021, we backfilled antibody (totalTestsAntibody, positiveTestsAntibody) and antigen (totalTestsAntigen, positiveTestsAntigen) testing time series from the states dataset. The data from the state describes testing encounters for both antibody and antigen testing, since we do not track testing encounters for antibody and antigen testing, we're using the testing specimens fields.

Antigen testing is reported as starting from January 26th, 2020, which is very early for antigen testing, we'll ask the state for clarifications.

On December 8, 2020, Virginia’s Recovered decreased by 200 without explanation.

On December 5, 2020, Virginia announced that some of the cases reported that day were part of a backlog. As a result, not all cases reported on December 5, 2020 were reported within the previous 24 hour period.

On December 2, 2020, we switched our source for Virginia’s Ever hospitalized, and shifted our entire time series for Virginia’s Ever hospitalized in order to more closely align with the reporting on Virginia’s COVID-19 dashboard.

As of September 18, 2020, Virginia's total test results are drawn from our totalTestEncountersViral field instead of calculated via positive+negative.

On August 31, 2020, we began publishing Positive PCR tests (specimens) for Virginia. This data has been collected daily since July 21, 2020. Previous data going back to February 27, 2020 was taken from state historical data as of July 21. Historical data for Total PCR Tests (encounters) before July 21, 2020 was updated based on the same dataset, extending the column back to February 27, 2020 as well.

On August 27, 2020, the Virgina dashboard did not update by our publish time. We are carrying over the values from August 26.

On August 7, 2020, due to the release of a backlog, Virginia reported an abnormally large case increase of around 2000.

As of May 15, 2020, Virginia is reporting PCR tests and antibody tests separately.