WRESTLING COVERAGE: Woodbridge and Patriot look loaded. SPORTS, PAGE 10
December 30, 2021 | Vol. 20, No. 52 | www.princewilliamtimes.com | $1.00 Covering Prince William County and surrounding communities, including Gainesville, Haymarket, Dumfries, Occoquan, Quantico and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park.
A look back at 2021
County approves redistricting map By Daniel Berti
Times Staff Writer
Data centers, ‘The Rose,’ the unending pandemic were all top stories in 2021
By Daniel Berti, Cher Muzyk, Jill Palermo and Aileen Streng With COVID-19 vaccinations just getting under way in December 2020, the new year held the promise of an end to the pandemic and a return to normalcy. It didn’t turn out that way. Twelve months and a few virus variations later, new daily infections, cases and hospitalizations were as high as ever during the last week of 2021, and tests were hard to find. The situation had hundreds of local residents waiting in long lines at urgent care centers, pharmacies and pop-up testing sites, desperate to know whether sore throats and runny noses were run-of-themill colds or a cause for greater concern. Among them was Kaila Hightower, 18, of Manassas, who began experiencing symptoms three days before Christmas. While waiting in line of about 30 people at a Curative testing kiosk outside Metz Middle School, Hightower said she worried she had passed the virus to four family members over the holidays as well as her coworkers and a few friends. Hightower said she received both her vaccination shots but not a booster. She needed a test result to show her boss in case she had to miss work. “It’s really too bad because I work in the food industry with the public,” she said. For the second year in a row, COVID-19 put a damper on the holiday season in Prince William and across the country, largely because the highly transmissible omicron variant had horrible timing, hitting just as people gathered for the holidays.
COVID-19 in Prince William County
2020 2021 Total Cases 29,337 42,187 71,524 Hospitalizations 1,432 1,280 2,712 Deaths 297 391 688 Source: Virginia Department of Health. Numbers were current as of Dec. 28.
PHOTO BY CHER MUZYK
At least 50 people were lined up for COVID-19 tests outside the Patient First urgent care on Liberia Avenue in Manassas on Tuesday, Dec. 28. The development came about seven months after cases had slowed to such a trickle – back in mid-May – that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said vaccinated people could go without masks. About a month later, in late June, the mass vaccination center at the old Gander Mountain store in Woodbridge closed for a few months due to lack of demand for the vaccine. Things took a turn for the worse in late summer when the delta variant made its way to the U.S. and fueled another spike in cases in the late summer, which peaked Sept. 10 when new daily cases reached 4,779 across the state, including 219 in Prince William. But that was nothing compared to the surge gripping Virginia by late December. A whopping 8,756 cases were reported in Virginia on Christmas Eve – the second-highest daily tally since the pandemic began – while Prince William recorded 746 cases on Christmas Day, a one-day total second only to the pre-vaccine days of January 2020. See 2021, page 4
COVID Updates See Page 2
Thousands of Prince William residents – although only a small percentage of the total population – will live in new county magisterial districts under redistricting maps recently approved by the board of county supervisors. The biggest changes occurred in the Coles and Occoquan districts and sparked accusations of partisan gerrymandering from the board’s Republican minority. The county must redraw its magisterial district boundaries every 10 years to coincide with the U.S. Census. Existing district lines were adjusted so that each magisterial district’s population will be roughly equal. The new districts will take effect in the 2023 local elections for the board of county supervisors and school board. Prince William County supervisors voted Tuesday, Dec. 21 along party lines, 5-3, to adopt the new district lines. The maps were drawn by independent redistricting firm ARCBridge Consulting and Training Inc. and adjusted by some of the supervisors before the vote. See REDISTRICTING, page 3
A map of the new Prince William County magisterial districts approved by the supervisors on Tuesday, Dec. 21.
Upcoming events in PWC See Page 8
88 DULLES, VA
It’s all about people . . . and always will be. www.vnb.com