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Half of schools in West Virginia will benefit from distance learning this week due to increased community spread of covid-19, and West Virginia has reached its highest level of coronavirus deaths and cases since start of the pandemic.
Governor Jim Justice recognized these worrying trends this week and urged Western Virginians to be careful. But Justice took no further mitigating response.
“It’s not time to panic. It is time to be careful ”, said the justice Friday.
Twenty-seven counties in West Virginia will not have classroom instruction next week due to increased levels of coronavirus displayed on the weekly map.
The State Department of Education’s Saturday night map showed 12 counties in red, the community’s highest levels of covid-19. And there were 15 other counties on orange, which also stands for distance learning.
So that’s 27 of West Virginia’s 55 counties with no school next week, as covid-19 levels continue to rise statewide.
Red counties include Barbour, Berkeley, Grant, Hancock, Marshall, Mason, Mineral, Ohio, Wayne, Wirt, Wood, and Wyoming counties.
Orange counties were Boone, Brooke, Cabell, Hampshire, Hardy, Jefferson, Morgan, Nicholas, Pocahontas, Preston, Putnam, Ritchie, Tyler, Upshur and Wetzel.
This is the first full week for schools in West Virginia after a long Thanksgiving break that Justice called because he was concerned about the virus spreading over the holidays.
The card was released on an impressive Saturday by West Virginia standards.
The state has recorded 30 covid-related deaths, a daily record since the start of the pandemic. The deaths go through a local-to-state level reporting process, so sometimes there can be a lag or a big batch of reporting at once, but it’s still a large number from West Virginia.
The deaths recorded today included a 36-year-old man, a 47-year-old man, a 51-year-old man and a 54-year-old man.
“Every loss is a heartbreak for a family and for our state,” said Bill Crouch, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Resources. “I urge you to remember that your safety actions result in saving the lives of other Western Virginians.”
West Virginia has recorded 1,400 positive covid cases in the past 24 hours with a positivity rate of 5.74%.
There were 641 Western Virginians in hospital with covid-19, another record that has risen sharply over the past month.
Among these, 177 require stays in intensive care unit and 85 require treatment on ventilators.
Governor Justice just days ago spoke of the possibility of targeting mitigation efforts for counties in West Virginia with high levels of the virus.
But in the past few days, he has expressed more reluctance to do so, saying people could simply cross county lines and he doesn’t think closing bars or restaurants would really help much. He expressed his reluctance to a general stop, but also said that “all options are on the table”.
“It’s everywhere. It’s everywhere. If anyone can tell me that closing 18 hairdressers in one county or elsewhere is going to make a significant difference, I’m ready to move, ”Justice said.
Responding to a question specifically about alarming numbers in Mineral County, the governor said, “Anyone who can get me something to say by closing this will turn the dial considerably, I’ll close it in a second.”
The governor described some steps the state has taken, such as making a face-covering warrant a little more restrictive, extending the Thanksgiving break for schools and pushing back the winter sports season.
“It’s not like we’re just sitting here wishing and hoping,” he says.
The state’s coronavirus response coordinator Clay Marsh said mitigation efforts may produce temporary results. He urged residents of the state to adopt face covers and social distancing efforts.
“The truth is, we have immense power with us today to try to reduce, to cut the chain, to reduce the spread of the virus,” Marsh said at Friday’s briefing.
Marsh is on the data review committee that is providing oversight ahead of the release of the Saturday card affecting school status.
The committee reviews the data from a public health perspective to determine the accuracy and reliability of the data to make sure it is a true indication of what is happening in West Virginia counties.
As a result of today’s review, the committee approved the following:
- Nicholas County: Changed from red to orange due to data validation and a deleted duplicate case.
- Upshur County: Changed from gold to orange due to data validation and updated lab results to the correct residence.
Data contributing to the Saturday Education Map is based on data from the DHHR County Alert Map at 11:59 PM on Thursday, December 3, 2020. This cutoff time is used to provide time to verify the accuracy and completeness of all data to be used in the Saturday education map.
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