COVID-19 Reporting Updates
March 17, 2025
Dear Colleague:
This letter provides updates on COVID-19 disease reporting and control regulations related to a variance the State Health Commissioner recently signed.
Effective February 13, 2025, physicians, persons in charge of medical care facilities, and local health directors are no longer required to report suspected or confirmed individual cases of COVID-19 as outlined in 12VAC5-90-90(A, C, E) and 12VAC5-90-80(I).
Directors of laboratories, including laboratories that hold Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) Certificates of Waiver, are still required to report all positive SARS-CoV-2 test results as outlined in 12VAC5-90-80(J) and 12VAC5-90-90(B).
Suspected or confirmed COVID-19 outbreaks or clusters of cases should continue to be reported to your local health department immediately by all entities who are required to report in 12VAC5-90-90.
As COVID-19 became endemic, reporting of individual SARS-CoV-2 infections to public health became increasingly sporadic. This sporadic reporting was due to changes in testing patterns caused by the now widespread availability of at-home testing, a high proportion of asymptomatic infections, and, as more of the population has developed immunity through vaccination and natural infection, fewer people developed severe illness requiring them to seek testing and medical care. As a result, individual case-based data are no longer representative of overall SARS-CoV-2 infection trends. Instead, more passive data sources are now used to monitor respiratory virus disease trends. These include monitoring aggregate reports of hospitalizations, emergency and urgent care visits, and wastewater surveillance. Continuing to track reports of laboratory-confirmed infections provides complimentary insights to overall trends. This transition away from individual case-based reporting aligns with disease surveillance efforts for other endemic respiratory viruses. Additionally, this change aims to ease the reporting burden for clinicians in Virginia.
Information on disease reporting in Virginia can be found on VDH’s Disease Reporting and Control Regulations webpage.
Thank you for your continued efforts to improve and maintain the health of all people in Virginia.
Sincerely,
Karen Shelton, MD
State Health Commissioner