Reston continues to outperform the county and state in its management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Snapshot.  A look at COVID-19 data in Reston as of July 29, 2020, shows that our community is faring better than Fairfax County as a whole in its handling of the pandemic.  Reston has fewer cases per 100,000 people, lower positivity in testing, and a higher share of the population tested than the county as whole as of that date.  Within Reston, central Reston (Baron Cameron to the Dulles Toll Road) is the relative “hot spot” with 1,346 cases/100,000 persons, yet its case growth and positivity rates have been relatively good.

In fact, Fairfax County is lagging well behind the state in managing COVID-19; in particular, tests positivity results are about 50% higher for the county than for Reston, Virginia, or the United States and the county’s number of cases per 100,000 persons is about 27% higher than both the state and Reston.   The one spot of good news at the county level is that the recent rate of increase in the number of cases, like Reston’s, is about have the growth rate of the state and the US.

Here’s is the data we have compiled as of that date:

Trends.  What this snapshot does not capture is trend in these COVID-19 variables over time.  In the two-month period that we have been tracking COVID-19, all data have improved for all variables we have measured. 

·       PCR Tests Administered:  Reston had only a testing rate of 3.4% in late May while Virginia’s testing rate was at 3.2% and the US rate was at 4.8%.  No data was available on Fairfax.  Clearly, Virginia and its sub-units were lagging in testing even at a time the country as a whole was weak in testing.  Now, even lagging Fairfax County has achieved 10.7% testing rate.

·       Testing Positivity.  In late May, Reston’s positivity rate stood at 21%, well above the state rate (15%) and the national rate (11%).  Now, except for Fairfax County, those rates have dropped to 8%.  The target goal to control COVID-19 is about 5%. 

·       Daily Percent Increase in COVID-19 cases.  The downward trend in new cases daily has maybe been most remarkable.  In late May, Reston’s percent daily increase was 1.8%.  Fairfax County’s rate of increase was 1.6%, Virginia’s was 2.0%, and the nation’s was 0.8%.   Reston and Fairfax County have cut their rate of increase by about half over the last month as shown in the graphic above, Virginia has seen some increase, and the nation’s rate of increase has doubled—largely due to the re-opening of the economy. 

COVID-19: The First Week of NOVA Re-opening

After just one week into the Phase 1 re-opening of northern Virginia businesses, the number of new cases of COVID-19 is increasing at a faster rate than the preceding week.  In fact, the rate of case increases is up 22% in Reston (from 1.8% to 2.1% per day) and Fairfax County’s new case rate increased by more than twice that—48%.  Virginia’s overall case rate, including those counties that opened two weeks earlier, increased 33%.  Worst, the nation’s COVID-19 case rate increased by 59% over the last week.

In Reston, the number of reported cases grew from 420 to 487 over the first week of the county’s re-opening, significantly less than the rate of growth in the county.  Overall, Reston’s number of cases per 100,000 people remains 27% below the county rate, but the county’s case rate per 100K people remains nearly twice that of the state and the nation—very poor.

With only 4.2% of its population tested Virginia remains well behind the nation in testing rate, but Fairfax County (4.7%) and Reston (4.8%) are performing better on this metric.  Nationally, 5.7% of the population has been tested for COVID-19.  

An Update on Reston’s COVID-19 Situation: Substantial Increase in Reston Cases, but Fairfax County is Badly Exceeding State & National COVID-19 Rates

Following up on our brief report on Reston’s COVID-19 situation 10 days ago, Virginia health data shows that the number of cases locally has grown 35% in the last ten days.  This is less than the growth rate for COVID-19 in the county and state, but more than double the national case growth rate.  

The highest number of cases in Reston is in the south Reston area (ZIP 20191) with 187 cases, but the highest case rate (cases/100K people) is in central Reston (ZIP 20190).  Still, the highest growth rate (changes in the number cases over the last 10 days) is in north Reston (ZIP 20194) at 50%, largely because it had so few cases 10 days ago.   A little pain spread throughout all of Reston.

More worrisome is the substantially higher case rate in Fairfax County—double that of the state as a whole and half again as high as the nation as a whole.  It is clear why the Governor kept northern Virginia on lock down for an extra period, but it is not clear that the added two weeks will be sufficient.  We wonder why Fairfax County continues to perform so poorly in preventing COVID-19.

We will update this periodically.

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.