Reston COVID-19 Case Rate is Better than the County, Much Worse than the State

While Fairfax County continues to refuse to provide data on the Coronavirus-19 outbreak on a ZIP code basis so neighborhoods and communities can understand their health situation, the Commonwealth of Virginia is now providing some of that information.  Here is the data available concerning Reston’s three ZIP codes provided by Virginia as of today (May 11, 2020):  

Reston Covid cases by ZIP Code, May 11, 2020

With an estimated 2016 population of 62,320, which means Reston is experiencing about 419 cases per 100,000 people.  On the other hand, Fairfax County data indicates that the county, with 5,973 covid cases and an estimated 1,167,000 population is running about 512 cases per 100,000 population, which means we are doing better than the county as a whole.  

Nonetheless, Reston is doing much more poorly than the state on a per capita basis (Reston at 419/100K and VA at only 253/100K) and only about consistent with the national average per capita case load.  This is somewhat surprising given the quality of health care and general wealth we have in our area.  WTOP explains this burgeoning county case burden:

The county, the largest in population in the state at an estimated 1.1 million people, said Thursday its pandemic curve is still in the exponential growth phase.  As of Wednesday night, Fairfax County has 5,045 cases, 832 hospitalized and 211 deaths from COVID-19 — each of those numbers is more than twice the total of the next highest county.

Fairfax County outlined the causes:

1. Significant community-wide transmission is happening in the Fairfax health district, which means more people are getting sick and, in turn, infecting others.
2. Commercial lab capacity continues to increase and more testing means more cases documented.
3. What is counted by public health as a COVID-19 case has changed.

All this provides good reason for Board of Supervisors Chairman Jim McKay to ask that Fairfax and other Northern Virginiacounties be exempted from the governor’s plan to begin re-opening the state next week.  

We will provide periodic updates on Reston’s situation.