Legislation passed during the 2020 special session requires VDH to share a public-facing dashboard of COVID-19 outbreaks reported to the agency by long term care facilities (LTCFs), schools, camps, and other entities. The new dashboard will include the information about LTCF outbreaks as it is currently presented, which has been publicly reported since June.

The new dashboard is expected to go live on the VDH website, COVID-19 in Virginia, on December 18, 2020. The dashboard will present the name of the facility, the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths associated with the outbreak, the locality where the facility is located, the date VDH was notified, and the status of the outbreak (see below): 

• Outbreak Status is defined as: 
  • “Outbreak in Progress” when the outbreak is ongoing and cases are still being reported and investigated. 
  • “Outbreak Pending Closure” if 28 days have passed without a documented new case and the outbreak has not yet been closed in the Virginia Outbreak Surveillance System (VOSS). There may be delays in confirming the outbreak is closed because the health department has to collect and process the data. This only refers to the outbreak pending closure in VOSS and not the facility. 
  • “Outbreak Closed” when two incubation periods (28 days) have passed without onset of new illness and the health district has closed the outbreak in VOSS. Outbreak Closed does NOT refer to the facility being closed. 
• To help protect anonymity of cases, if fewer than 5 cases or between 0 and 5 deaths are associated with a facility outbreak, the counts will be represented by an asterisk (*).

The new dashboard will be posted on the COVID-19 Data Insights page. A hyperlink will be added to the Virginia COVID-19 Long-Term Care Task Force page where the LTC Outbreak Data was previously. 

The dashboard is updated once a week so that the data can stabilize and appropriate communications can occur before information is publicly posted. If you notice an error, please contact your local health department. Information will be corrected on the next weekly dashboard update.