By Connie Morrison —
The Virginia Department of Health has reported a COVID-19 death each of the last four days, including in the data released Sunday, May 17, bringing the total COVID-19 related deaths in Northampton County to nine. Accomack County also has nine deaths attributed to COVID-19.
Northampton County has the highest rate of deaths from COVID-19 in the state at 77 per 100,000. The next highest rate is 67 deaths per 100,000 in Page County, in the Shenandoah Valley. The COVID-19 death rate for Accomack County is 28 per 100,000, the 11th-highest in the state.
The department of health also provides hospitalization rates and case rates per 100,000. Northampton’s hospitalization rate is 119 per 100,000 (a count of 14 hospitalizations), the fourth-highest rate in the state, and its case rate is 1,687 per 100,000 (a count of 198 cases), also the fourth-highest rate in the state.
Accomack’s hospitalization rate is 93 per 100,000 (a count of 30 hospitalizations), the ninth-highest rate in the state, and its case rate is 2,123 (a count of 688 cases ), which is the third-highest in the state.
Of the 766 Eastern Shore cases for which race is reported, 67%, or 514 cases, are black or African American, 30% are white, and 3% are classified as “other.” African Americans account for about 30 percent of the population of the Eastern Shore, according to the most recent census estimates.
Of the 777 Eastern Shore cases that reported ethnicity, about 18%, or 138 cases, were Hispanic or Latino. Hispanic or Latino people make up about 9.3% of the Eastern Shore’s population, according to census estimates.
Just over 52% of the cases were female and slightly less than 49% were male.
Case counts are expected to continue climbing as 510 positive results from testing at Perdue and Tyson poultry plants are entered into the department of health database. “The majority of these cases will not appear in the case counts on the VDH website for several days,” said Eastern Shore Health District chief operating officer Jon Richardson in a May 15 press release.
