Virginia tallied a record high daily COVID-19 caseload on Wednesday with 4,652 new cases. COVID hospitalizations are continuing to rise in the state and across the region, and more people are expected to travel and spread the virus during the holiday season.

There are 319,133 known cases in Virginia in all. Fifty-five more people have died from the virus, 4,760 total.

The commonwealth’s other COVID metrics are also increasingly bleak: hospitalizations, for instance, are at an all-time high. They’ve been trending up since October, topped the previous May peak at the beginning of December, and have only continued climbing since then, with 2,586 patients currently hospitalized for the virus.

The District also saw a large caseload today, with 326 new cases. It has 27,226 total known cases. Seven more people have died, 751 in all.

D.C.’s rolling seven-day average case rate is down a bit from the past several days, but still elevated past its May peak at 31.75 cases per 100,000 people.

The percentage of all hospitalizations that are COVID patients in D.C. is still ticking up and now stands at 11.8%. The city considers that percentage too large for its current state of reopening (Phase 2, with some additional restrictions).

On Fox5 this morning, Mayor Muriel Bowser urged residents to ‘dial back’ their typical holiday activity, adding, “We’ve been responding to this and surviving this for 10 months, and we all need to get to the other side of it so that we can be vaccinated and get back to normal.”

Today Maryland tallied 2,465 new cases and 49 new deaths. There are 257,862 total known cases, and 5,568 people have died in all.

Currently 1,776 people are hospitalized in Maryland due to the coronavirus. Its number of hospitalized COVID patients has been trending up since September, peaking with a record on Dec. 15. After a brief dip, hospitalizations are again rising.