“How to do that in a complex, open society like the U.S. and Virginia in a nuanced and responsible way, we’ve got to develop that,” Carey said. “We definitely need to develop a different toolkit besides opening everything up, or opening everything up halfway.”

Northam on Monday said the state would make decisions about restrictions on an ongoing basis, as more data become available. For now, he said that an order calling for recreational businesses closed until April 23 would be expanded; he declined to share further details until Wednesday.

The UVA model is in contrast with a popular projection out of the University of Washington. That model, which projects healthcare resource use, projects that Virginia’s peak will come April 27 with 1,474 hospitalizations — far from the state’s roughly 6,500 available beds.

Researchers at UVA based their modeling on an estimate of positive cases that far exceeds those confirmed and reported by state health officials. Relying on evidence and research in New York and elsewhere, they argue that Virginia has only identified 15% of the total number of COVID-19 cases in the state.

In other words, for every positive case detected in Virginia, seven others are going undetected.