Virginia is seeing the largest single-day spike in COVID-19 cases yet with more than 12,000 new infections.
Lynchburg saw the biggest increase followed by Roanoke County and Roanoke City.
Wednesday afternoon Gov. Ralph Northam released a statement, saying the numbers are a reason for concern, but not a reason to panic as vaccinations are keeping people safe.
This comes amid growing demand for tests and sites all across the state are running out of supply.
“The surge that has happened over this past week is faster than any increase we’ve seen in disease that we’ve seen thus far. I think that combination of an incredibly contagious variant, the increase in cases happening very quickly and the overlap of holiday, traveling, and gathering is really leading to this demand that we’re struggling to keep up with,” said VDH vaccine coordinator Danny Avula.
Avula added he anticipates the demand for testing to increase over the next few weeks due to the delta and omicron variants. Because of this, the health department is working to increase the number of community testing events.