On Tuesday morning (Feb. 23), 12 kindergarteners stepped into their classroom at Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church for the first time.

Their teacher, Claire Kelley, and Principal Lauren Badini had distributed individually bagged breakfasts on the distanced desks. The classroom looked like the quintessential kindergarten classroom, decorated with bright colors and posters.

However, some of the posters bore messages instructing students to keep their distance from each other, wash their hands, and wear masks, a reminder that this was anything but a typical school day in a typical school year.

“It’s a pandemic classroom,” Badini said. “[Kelley’s] done an amazing job making it fun and exciting.”

Kelley will welcome another 12 kindergarteners to her classroom today (Wednesday).

“I’m really excited,” she said. “I’m super hopeful things are getting better.”

Nearly one year since schools closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Fairfax County Public Schools is reopening its doors for families who opt for in-person instruction in stages over the next month.

After delaying plans to resume in-person classes in January, the Fairfax County School Board approved a new Return to School timeline earlier this month that started bringing students back on Feb. 16. Its schedule lines up with Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s mandate that all school divisions provide an option for in-person instruction by Mar. 15.

This week, 7,000 kindergarteners across the division returned, along with preschoolers, Early Head Start students, and other students receiving specialized instruction. Kids who are not receiving special education services are following a hybrid model that provides two days of in-person classes per week, with groups coming in on alternating days.

Graham Road will add 60 first and second graders on Mar. 9 and 80 students in grades 3-6 on Mar. 16. The phasing was designed so kindergarteners would have time to adjust to mitigation behaviors before being overwhelmed by older students, according to Badini.

“We’ve been prepping since July,” Badini said. “We’ve had to rethink every aspect of school. Elementary school turns on collaboration, talking, being close, holding hands.”

Kelley started preparing her students over Zoom by having them greet each other with fist bumps and air hugs. They practiced wearing their masks and watched videos of handwashing. The teacher developed songs and verbal cues, like pantomiming a zombie, to make sure kids stay apart.

“These are the rules they have to follow to stay in school,” she said. “I’m taking a step back to make sure they understand what they need to do to stay safe.”

For Badini, Mar. 12, 2020 was the last day things felt normal. When schools closed, the principal sprang into action to make sure her students — most of whom qualify for free- or reduced-price lunches — have internet access, piloting a program with FCPS and internet provider Cox.

Badini says the school tries to “do everything we can” to make up for the sacrifices parents are making, by providing free meals and snacks because “there has had to be a give and take somewhere.”

While Graham Road has some distinct challenges, all school principals are grappling with engagement, connectivity, and attendance, she said.

“We have wanted this and have been waiting for this for a year,” Badini said. “We know parents are frustrated. We’re working parents, too.”

(Updated at 2:35 p.m.) Following statewide trends, the number of daily COVID-19 cases continues to dip in Fairfax County.

As of today (Monday), the number of new cases stood at 113 with a rolling weekly average of 193 cases — the second-lowest number of daily reported cases this year. Only 89 new cases were reported in Fairfax County on Feb. 8.

The number of new cases has continued to fall since cases peaked with an all-time high of 1,485 on Jan. 17, according to data released by the Virginia Department of Health.

So far, 134,359 people have been vaccinated by Fairfax County, a number that includes first and second doses, according to the county’s data dashboard.

The county’s health department is currently scheduling appointments for people who registered on Monday, Jan. 18. A little over 96,900 people remain on the county’s waitlist.

While county officials have touted progress with the vaccination system, the jurisdiction’s decision to opt-out of the state’s new COVID-19 vaccine pre-registration caused confusion late last week.

Since then, the county’s health department has addressed common concerns and questions in a recent blog post. The county is still encouraging residents to use the county’s online form to register for vaccines.

Across the state, 1.1 million have received at least one dose and 481,297 people have been fully vaccinated.

Virginia launched a statewide vaccine registration system that Fairfax County is not participating in at this time. We've received several questions about this and have posted some answers to these and other FAQS. Please see: https://t.co/dRvmdqAlPY#FFXCOVID pic.twitter.com/P2z07NoEnz

— FairfaxCounty Health (@fairfaxhealth) February 21, 2021

Image via Virginia Department of Health

Fairfax County opted out of Virginia’s new statewide COVID-19 vaccine pre-registration system to reduce confusion, but the decision seems to have had the opposite effect for some county residents.

The Virginia Department of Health told Reston Now, Tysons Reporter’s affiliate site, that on Wednesday (Feb. 17), the day after the launch, the statewide COVID information line received 542 calls from Fairfax County zip codes asking questions about vaccines that were rerouted back to the county’s call center.

When asked about this, the Fairfax County Health Department acknowledged the potential for confusion.

“We understand that it could still be confusing that there are two systems,” wrote Jeremy Lasich, spokesperson for the Fairfax County Health Department. “We are happy that we have a strong partnership with VDH and that their call center is appropriately routing questions about Fairfax County back to our local call center.”

Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay told Tysons Reporter last week that the county had decided to forgo the Virginia appointment system in favor of its own existing system to “cut down on confusion.”

Reston Now reached out to the Chairman’s office with the information from VDH but has yet to hear back as of publication.

Fairfax County is the only jurisdiction in Virginia to opt-out of the state COVID-19 vaccine pre- registration system.

The county maintains that they are “consistently” communicating the need to register through their system through their website, blog, social media, and other avenues.

This includes translating COVID-related materials into Spanish and sharing information via text messages from the Health Department’s outreach team.

VDH has also added language to their website directing Fairfax County residents back to the appropriate portal.

If Fairfax County residents do end up registering through the state system, the information will end up eventually going back to the county, but those residents will be added to the end of the waitlist, the county explains in a newly published blog post.

If residents register in both the state and county systems, the first registration will be honored and the second one will be removed.

Over the last several weeks, the vaccine rollout across Fairfax County, Virginia, and the D.C. region has continued to be plagued with technical issues, equity concerns, and logistical challenges.

The county is currently in “Phase 1b”, meaning they are offering vaccine registration for all residents 65 years or older as well as those between 16 and 64 years old with underlying medical conditions.

Some essential workers are also in the process of getting vaccinated, including health care personnel, childcare workers, and K-12 teachers or staff members living or working in the county.

Fairfax County now has a registration status checker for people to see their eligibility, and residents can sign up for an appointment through the county’s vaccine registration page. Fairfax County residents can also call 703-324-7404 for more information.

According to the county’s new data dashboard, those who registered on January 18 — the first day it was open to those in Phase 1b — are now being scheduled for appointments.

More than 42,000 people signed up that day, nearly four times as many people as Jan. 11, the next busiest day for registrations, the county health department says.

The county expects it will take “several weeks” for all those that registered on Jan. 18 to get a scheduled appointment.

It may appear as if progress isn’t being made when the appointment date on the dashboard isn’t changing, but the health department is moving through registrations, Lasich told Reston Now.

“We continue to ask for your patience,” he said. “We promise you will get an appointment if you are on our list.”

Photo via Fairfax County Health Department

There are a number of things that give Caffe Amouri owner Michael Amouri a warm feeling: drinking a cup of coffee, unsurprisingly, getting to a toll booth and learning someone paid it forward, and stopping to chat with someone in the street.

But those feel-good community moments have been hard to come by during the pandemic.

In the hopes of reviving that neighborly goodwill among his customers, Amouri has introduced a pay-it-forward “Cup on the Wall” program to his Vienna coffee shop. He was inspired by the Vienna Foodies and the Italian practice of caffè sospeso — literally “pending coffee” — when a cup of coffee is paid for in advance as an anonymous act of charity.

Customers ordering in-person or online can choose to buy any drink on the menu for someone else. Staff put a sticker on the window for someone to “cash in” when they order.

“If you’re feeling a little down, come and let a ‘friend’ buy you a drink,” he said.

It can be for anyone, particularly people who cannot afford a cup of coffee, but also for someone having a bad day or celebrating their birthday, Amouri says. The option will be available as long as the community engages with it.

Though it has mostly stayed open, Caffe Amouri has not been offering indoor service during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Competitively, we’ve probably lost some ground, but I just don’t feel I can do it,” Amouri said.

Customers can order in-person from one window, or pick up an online purchase from another window. The coffeehouse’s interior is configured to allow for six feet of distance between staff members, and staff and delivery workers are screened daily for COVID-19 symptoms.

Amouri plans to reopen after his staff is vaccinated.

“I have amazing staff and I can’t believe they’ve weathered it so well,” he said.

Amouri says he founded his shop nearly 11 years ago on the principles of quality, community, and sustainability. During the pandemic, he said the cafe’s role as a liaison among the government, the Vienna Business Association board — which Amouri sits on — and residents has grown in importance.

He commended Vienna residents for supporting local businesses and making the small town “feel even more small-townish.”

“There are times when I go, ‘I didn’t want to have a coffeehouse and hand coffee out a window’,” he said. “But as long as we can keep our doors open until we can fully open, I’m going to count that as a success.”

Photo courtesy Michael Amouri

COVID-19 case rates in Fairfax County have leveled off over the past week after appearing to trend downward since mid-January, when a record 1,485 cases were reported in a single day.

As of today, the county’s seven-day average is at 312.4 cases and has been hovering between 290 and 337 cases since Feb. 4. While the anticipated post-winter holiday surge seems to have tapered off, case levels are still higher than the pandemic’s initial spring peak, when the highest recorded seven-day average was 303 cases on May 31.

With 194 new cases today, the Fairfax Health District has now reported 64,950 COVID-19 cases, 3,482 hospitalizations, and 849 deaths, according to data from the Fairfax County Health Department.

Today also marked the launch of Virginia’s new statewide COVID-19 vaccine registration system, though Fairfax County is not participating for the time being.

Based on a registration data dashboard that went live on Feb. 12, Fairfax County has made slow but discernible progress in its efforts to vaccinate older adults, some groups of essential workers, and other eligible populations.

The Fairfax County Health Department has whittled its waitlist of people who have registered but haven’t been given an appointment yet down to 105,268 people, as of 10 a.m. The list had around 180,000 registrants as recently as last Thursday (Feb. 11). In total, 229,185 people have registered with the county to get the COVID-19 vaccine so far.

The health department is currently making appointments for more than 42,000 people who registered on Jan. 18, which saw particularly high demand since it was the day when the county expanded eligibility for the vaccine to people between the ages of 65 and 74 as well as people with high-risk medical conditions.

People who have registered for an appointment through the county health department can now see where they are in the queue with a registration status checker, though the rollout of that tool was not without its challenges.

Fairfax County has delivered 110,098 of the 114,923 vaccine doses that it has gotten from the Virginia Department of Health so far. About 68% of those doses were adminstered by the county health department, while the remaining 31% were distributed to other providers, like Inova.

According to the VDH, 48,404 people in Fairfax County have been fully vaccinated for COVID-19, and 163,200 total doses have been administered in the county. That number includes residents and staff at long-term care facilities that have been getting the vaccine through the federal government rather than the local health department.

Images via CDC on Unsplash, Virginia Department of Health

The number of daily reported COVID-19 cases in Fairfax County continues to drop, returning to similar case loads recorded in June.

The rolling weekly average of cases for this past week stands at 289 cases, down from a reported high of nearly 697 cases on Jan. 17. The number of daily cases has continued on a steep decline since hitting a record high of 1,485 cases on Jan. 17. Fairfax County reported just 89 cases today, according to the state’s COVID-19 dashboard.

In June, the peak seven-day average was 303 cases.

The drop in the cases is also reflected in statewide statistics. As of Feb. 7, the rolling weekly average of cases was 3,478. Although this is still higher than any weekly average before December, the overall number of cases are declining steeply.

So far, the pandemic has claimed the lives of 826 people in the Fairfax Health District, which includes Fairfax County and the cities of Fairfax and Falls Church. 3,389 people have been hospitalized, and there have now been 62,502 total COVID-19 cases.

The drop comes as Gov. Ralph Northam directs all school divisions to explore options for in-person learning by March 15 and look into plans for extending school into the summer.

In Fairfax County, more than 120,000 doses of the vaccine have been administered, and 26,175 people are fully vaccinated.

Image via Virginia Department of Health

The novel coronavirus has now killed 802 people in the Fairfax Health District, which includes Fairfax County and the Cities of Fairfax and Falls Church.

While the number of new cases and hospitalizations appear to be trending downward, Fairfax County has still been averaging 365 COVID-19 cases, eight hospitalizations, and 4.5 deaths per day over the past seven days, according to the Virginia Department of Health’s data.

With 237 new cases today (Monday), the Fairfax Health District has recorded a total of 60,436 COVID-19 cases, and 3,317 people have been hospitalized due to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

After a hectic week of mass appointment cancellations and revamped protocols, state and local officials in Virginia hope that an anticipated increase in vaccine supplies, clearer guidance to health providers, and the pending launch of a centralized registration system will result in a more efficient and less confusing COVID-19 vaccination program.

According to a presentation that Fairfax County Health Director Dr. Gloria Addo-Ayensu is scheduled to deliver to county supervisors tomorrow (Tuesday), Virginia is currently receiving about 105,000 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines per week. The Fairfax Health District has a weekly allocation of 13,600 doses.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced last week that the federal government is expected to increase its allocation of vaccine to the Commonwealth by 16%. He also told local health districts to split their supplies evenly between older adults and the other eligible populations, including essential workers and people with high-risk medical conditions.

Fairfax County continues to lead Virginia’s vaccination efforts, administering 95,935 total doses and fully vaccinating 15,864 people as of today. However, that is only a fraction of the 223,625 doses that the Fairfax Health District has received, according to a new VDH dashboard.

As of Jan. 28, the county had a waitlist of 168,422 people who have pre-registered for an appointment through the Fairfax County Health Department, which has been administering the vaccine to older adults, healthcare workers, long-term care facility employees, and people with underlying medical conditions.

Essential workers, including teachers and first responders, have been getting vaccinated through special clinics from Inova Health Systems, which has reported administering about 75,000 doses. Last week, the nonprofit ceased giving new appointments for people looking to receive their first dose, though Fairfax County Public Schools was able to reschedule appointments for its staff that had been canceled.

Overall, Virginia has received 1.3 million vaccine doses, administered 843,230 doses, and fully vaccinated 124,407 people. The pace of vaccinations has been picking up, with the Commonwealth now averaging 33,675 doses a day, but remains short of Northam’s goal of 50,000 per day.

Images via CDC on Unsplash, VDH, Fairfax County Health Department

The seven-day average of COVID-19 cases in Fairfax County took a steep decline this week, data from the Virginia Department of Health shows.

Today’s average for the past week was 366 cases, compared to roughly 681 cases during the prior week of Jan. 18, and 535 cases on Jan. 11. However, the number of new cases per day continues to be higher than when the outbreak first peaked last spring and early summer.

For example, VDH reported 705 new cases for the Fairfax Health District, including 689 cases in Fairfax County, 12 in the City of Falls Church, and four from Fairfax City. That is well above the spring high of 434 on May 28. The highest number of new cases for one day — 1,485 cases — was reported on Jan. 17.

Similarly, hospitalizations in the county are also on the decline after peaking in early May. The weekly average of hospitalizations has hovered at numbers less than 20 for the last few months, according to VDH data. Today, VDH reported seven hospitalizations and a rolling average of eight.

3,254 people in the Fairfax Health District have been hospitalized due to COVID-19 over the course of the pandemic. There have now been 57,833 cases and 768 deaths.

Roughly 40 percent of the county’s total population over the age of 16 is eligible to receive the vaccine. So far, 57,702 people have received the first dose of the vaccine, and 6,141 people have been fully vaccinated. Statewide, 416,200 people have received the first dose, and 58,779 are fully vaccinated.

County officials have noted that, while many people are eligible for the vaccine, a limited amount of vaccines is currently available.

In a Jan. 21 letter to Gov. Ralph Northam, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay urged the state to increase the county’s vaccine supply.

The county has more than 100,000 residents registered through the health department’s vaccinations system.

“We average about 10,000 doses a week, which does not meet the demand nor the expectation of the 100,000 people we now have in the queue,” McKay wrote.

People can register online or by calling the county’s vaccine hotline at 703-324-7404.

I wrote to @GovernorVA about our need for more vaccine in FX. We have put every local resource into vaccinating as many ppl as possible. We lead VA in vaccinating, but demand outpaces vaccine available from the state. Ppl are anxious, however know vaccinations are our priority. pic.twitter.com/CXfBufuyzj

— Jeff McKay (@JeffreyCMcKay) January 21, 2021

Image via VDH

About 40% of Fairfax County residents 16 and older are now eligible to register for a COVID-19 vaccine appointment after Virginia expanded phase 1b to include anyone 65 and older as well as people with medical conditions or a disability that puts them at high risk of severe illness if they contract the disease.

Eligible populations now include:

• Healthcare workers and long-term care facility employees
• People age 65 and older
• People who are 16-64 years old and have high-risk medical conditions
• Essential frontline workers, including school staff, corrections and homeless shelter workers, grocery store workers, and police, fire, and hazmat first responders

However, the Fairfax County Health Department’s registration system has been plagued by technical issues and struggled keep up with the high demand for the vaccines. In addition, limited supplies mean that even people who are able to register might have to wait months to secure an appointment.

While the process has been less than ideal so far, Fairfax County has administered more than 45,000 vaccine doses, and 4,620 residents have been fully vaccinated, as of Jan. 20, according to Virginia Department of Health data.

Have you been able to successfully register for the COVID-19 vaccine yet? Have you tried to register but been frustrated by the county’s system? If you’re not eligible yet, are you planning to get vaccinated once you are?

Photo by Karen Bolt/Fairfax County Public Schools