COVID-19 cases in the New River Health District have started to decline.
But, director Noelle Bissell says officials there were hopeful this week would’ve seen a sharper drop off in infection numbers.
“But we do expect in the next week or so that it will be a much sharper decline as we’ve seen in other places like New York and some of the more populated areas – northern Virginia – some of the more populated areas that saw omicron surge a little bit sooner than we did,” she explained Monday.
While hospitalizations overall have started to come down – Ballad Health has broken its previous pandemic record set just last week.
As of Monday, Jan. 31, we are treating 443 inpatients with COVID-19. This data pertains to Ballad Health’s 21-county service area of Tennessee and Virginia.#balladhealth pic.twitter.com/YVOZEwMboY
— Ballad Health (@BalladHealth) January 31, 2022
The health system that serves southwest Virginia and northeast Tennessee reported 443 virus-related hospitalizations Monday.
Bissell on masking in K-12 schools
Masking in Virginia schools has been a heated topic of debate since Governor Glenn Youngkin allowed districts to make their own decision on the matter earlier this month.
Bissell gave an update Monday on what she’s seen since that executive order went into effect.
“It’s been a couple of weeks now – we haven’t seen surges in those districts; and remember I’m covering all the way down to southwest," she explained. "We have not seen surges in those districts to correlate with that – we’ll continue to follow it.”
Dr. Bissell said cases in children tend to follow the overall community trend. And in the New River Valley, the region appears to have peaked.
She stressed that if parents do want their kids to be masked, they should ensure their children have well-fitted masks.
