Things are back to normal at a federal prison in McDowell County after a carbon monoxide leak earlier this week.
A spokesperson for the federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed via email that 26 inmates and five corrections staffers received medical treatment after a carbon monoxide leak was found on Tuesday.
Emergency dispatchers in neighboring Mercer County confirmed that a caller reported the smell of “noxious gas” on Tuesday at 11:32 p.m. Mercer County fire crews were dispatched but called off at 12:14 a.m., before arriving on the scene. The trip from Princeton in Mercer County to the prison in McDowell takes about an hour and 15 minutes.
The prison is serviced by McDowell Gas Co-op in Welch. A representative told West Virginia Public Broadcasting that the carbon monoxide was not a natural gas leak involving lines maintained by the company.
The Bureau has not released any more details at this time.
A World War II veteran who passed away recently has proven that it’s possible to keep helping others by giving the gift of life and becoming the oldest recorded organ donor in United States history.
Cecil F. Lockhart of Welch was 95 years old when he passed away May 4 after a short illness. He served his country during World War II and contributed to his community by mining coal for more than 50 years, and his desire to serve others continued when his donated liver aided a 62-year-old woman.
The Center for Organ Recovery & Education (CORE) announced Monday that Lockhart’s decision to help others after death made him the oldest recorded organ donor in United States history. This distinction was confirmed by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS).
Lockhart’s family said he was moved to become an organ donor following the death of his son, Stanley, in 2010, after which Stanley healed the lives of 75 people through tissue donation and restored sight to two others through cornea donation. Cecil Lockhart is survived by Helen Cline Lockhart, his wife of 75 years, his daughter, Sharon White, and his son, Brian Lockhart, as well as three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Bill Davis, who is Sharon White’s husband, said that Lockhart served in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II, and was “on the ground” during the fighting in the Philippines.
Davis told the Bluefield Daily Telegraph that his father-in-law would be “ecstatic” to know that his decision to become an organ donor has helped a person already.
“Cecil was a very caring and giving man,” Davis recalled.
Basically, Lockhart thought that since he would not need his body after passing away, his organs could go on to help people in need. Davis said that he’s an organ donor, too, and it’s something the family is urging other people to consider. Davis brought up the subject during Lockhart’s funeral.
“I asked people to think about becoming an organ donor in his honor and his memory,” Davis stated. “One of the things is you can do good things with your life even after your life is completed.”
Lockhart’s daughter also spoke about her father’s desire to help others.
“He was a generous person when he was alive, and we are filled with pride and hope knowing that, even after a long, happy life, he is able to continue that legacy of generosity,” Sharon White said. “When my brother was a donor after he passed away a few years ago, it helped my dad to heal. And today, knowing his life is continuing through others really is helping us through our grief, too.”
Davis said that Lockhart was the oldest organ donor on record in the United States and as far as the family knew, the oldest internal organ donor in the world. Besides his liver, patches of his skin will be used to help burn victims and repair cleft palates in children. Even if internal organs are not acceptable, people can still donate skin, body fluid, the corneas of their eyes and other organs, he added.
“The liver can last for a long time and Cecil was in good health at 95,” Davis stated. “He didn’t drink and he didn’t smoke, and he ate the things he should eat and his liver was in very good condition from what the surgeons told me.
One surgeon told Davis that the 62-year-old woman could live to become 95, too.
We’re talking about a functioning adult human being, and that’s just amazing to me,” he said.
Both CORE representatives and Lockhart’s family pointed out there is no age limit for becoming an organ donor.
“There’s no reason not to be an organ donor, and he proved that no matter how old you are, you can still be a donor,” Davis stated.
More than 30 percent of all deceased organ donors in the United States since 1988 have been age 50 or older, according to UNOS data. And it’s a trend that’s rising.
So far in 2021, 39 percent of all U.S. deceased organ donors have been age 50 or older, according to UNOS. That is up more than 8 percent from just 20 years ago. Seven percent of deceased organ donors since 1988 have been age 65 or older. In the last 20 years, 17 people over age 90 have died and become organ donors in the United States, with the first instance occurring in 2001.
“It’s really not something that just for the young,” said Katelynn Metz, a CORE media representative.
Donations like the one Lockhart made go on help thousands of people.
“CORE is incredibly proud to have been able to make this historic organ donation possible,” said Susan Stuart, CORE president and CEO. “This landmark in the field of transplantation is just another example of CORE’s pioneering legacy and commitment to innovation, which, over the last 40 years, has given 6,000 people in the United States the opportunity to save more than 15,000 others as organ donors.”
The record-breaking donation in West Virginia took place during Older Americans Month, which is observed in the United States every May to acknowledge the contributions of past and current older persons to the country. UNOS Chief Medical Officer David Klassen said that Cecil Lockhart’s contribution is indeed significant – and one that each and every American has the power to achieve as well by registering as a donor.
“Too often, people mistakenly believe there is an age limit associated with being an organ donor,” said Klassen. “The truth is, no one is ever too old or too young to give the gift of life. Every potential donor is evaluated on a case-by-case basis at the time of their death to determine which organs and tissue are suitable for donation. Cecil’s generous and historic gift is a perfect example of that.”
Lockhart served his country during World War II and continued to serve it by mining the coal needed for America’s industry and power generation, Davis said. He kept helping other people after he passed away, and now his family is urging other people to follow his example.
“I look at it this way,” he added. “Jesus told us ‘What you do for the least of these, you do for Me’ and if I give an organ – a piece of skin, an eye cornea – for another human being, I’m doing what He told us to do.”
“There is a reason that group of people was called ‘The Greatest Generation,’” Davis concluded. “Because he gave and he gave and he gave, and now it’s our turn.”
The West Virginia Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to approve the closing and consolidation of schools in four counties.
Board members acknowledged the difficulties of school closings but applauded the work of county superintendents in formulating and promoting each plan.
Next, counties will seek funding from the School Building Authority to pay for the proposed school improvements.
Here are the changes and the counties’ reasoning.
Kanawha County
Cedar Grove Middle School would close and its students would start attending Dupont Middle School.
In their proposal, Kanawha County Schools officials cite decreasing population and student enrollment as well as the age of the Cedar Grove facility. They also say the merger would lead to a better education experience for students.
For the last decade, the county has seen its population decline by almost 15,000 people and there is no sign of this trend changing, according to U.S. Census Bureau data and projection. The number of deaths has been higher than the number of births in Kanawha County as well as thousands of people choosing to move out of state.
At Cedar Grove Middle, enrollment has declined by 18 percent over the last decade, from 194 students in 2010 to 156 students this year. County-wide, there has been a 6.3% decline in student enrollment over the last decade. Projections show both downward trends continuing.
Cedar Grove Middle has $8.3 million in needed improvements if the school is not closed. An engineering analysis included in the county proposal almost half that at $4.2 million to improve Dupont Middle to accommodate the consolidation and new students.
According to the written proposal for the change, it would provide better programming for special needs students and have lower student-teacher ratios in both core classes and the arts.
McDowell County
In McDowell County, the school board plans to close Fall River Elementary School, Kimball Elementary School, and Welch Elementary School. Before three schools would be consolidated, a new facility would need to be funded and built.
Like most of the state, McDowell County has seen a steady decline in student enrollment and population. Over the last decade, the county has lost 4,000 residents and is projected to lose another 2,000 in the next decade. With current birth and death rates, these downward trends are expected to continue.
Additionally, the county plan said it would be cheaper to operate one school as opposed to three. The current trio of schools is being utilized at between 23% and 34% of capacity. The consolidated elementary school would be at 85% capacity.
Under the proposal, busing would also be consolidated. Bus runs would be reduced from 26 runs to 13 runs as the need for transfer buses would be eliminated. Just under half of the bus routes would be the same time or shorter while the other half would be longer.
One of the three elementary schools, Fall River Elementary, would be repurposed to house the McDowell County Career and Technical Center (CTC). The county says repairs to the elementary school building would be cheaper than repairing the current CTC building.
Mineral County
The proposed changes in Mineral County are similar to McDowell with three schools becoming one as Frankfort Intermediate School, Fort Ashby Primary School, and Wiley Ford Primary School would become a new district primary school.
Mineral County Schools cites three main reasons for the change: aging facilities, current grade configurations, and projected improvements for students.
Currently, students attend either Fort Ashby or Wiley Ford through second grade before attending Frankfort Intermediate for third and fourth grade. The new school would keep students under one roof from Pre-K through fourth grade.
The proposed state-of-the-art facility would provide additional education opportunities through a STEAM lab, dedicated cafeteria, gymnasium, and music room.
At the three current schools, enrollment has decreased by 3.6% over the last decade and is not expected to increase. The county’s population is also declining and projected to keep declining.
The county says accessibility for disabled students would improve, with the new school being wheelchair accessible (two of the old schools are not), and having many aspects designed with physically disabled students in mind.
Wayne County
The plan laid out by Wayne County Schools would combine two schools across the street from each other just south of Huntington.
Buffalo Elementary would close and merge with Buffalo Middle into a new Pre-K through eighth-grade school as enrollment and population projections show a continued decline for the next decade.
Buffalo Elementary currently has “severe water issues” during significant weather events, according to the proposal.
The new facility will have a STEM program and several partnerships with nearby colleges and an airfield to involve students in the aerospace field. The county says the additional space would also better provide for special needs students with classrooms with connected bathrooms and crisis prevention areas not present in the current facility.
Officials said both buildings are also under-utilized and it would be more efficient to combine them. The middle school is only using 57% of its space while 85% is recommended.
Successful businessman Monty Moran got his pilot license in 2017 and has been flying around the country, dropping into underserved communities to talk with people about their struggles.
“The people in McDowell county had been through a tremendous amount of struggle, and it’s caused them not to, not to divide apart and throw things at each other, but instead to draw tighter as a community,” Moran said. “And, you know, I’ve learned through this whole docu series, all six episodes the value of struggle. Those who find the most struggle and hardship, though I find often are the wisest, most giving, most generous, most comforting and most compassionate people that I ever meet.”
A new docuseries features underprivileged communities that often face harsh realities and statistics. Moran, a former attorney, hosts the series called, CONNECTED: A SEARCH FOR UNITY with intentions of empathy and understanding. The series features McDowell County, West Virginia in one of the episodes.
While in McDowell County, Moran met up with several folks including Derek Tyson, a resident in Welch who is the editor of the local newspaper, The Welch Daily News. In the episode, Tyson shared the story of his father who killed himself when Derek was just 16-years-old.
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Welch Daily News Editor Derek Tyson (right) speaks with successful businessman Monty Moran (left) beside the large newspaper printing machine.
“My dad, he’s my hero, he always, always will be my hero,” Tyson explains in the show. “But that cycle can’t continue. Somebody’s got to sit there, and just grit their damn teeth and take it. Because you can’t pass on a legacy like that. It’s not fair to the kids. And the thought of another human feeling worthless. Like I like to feel all the time. I gotta learn to love myself, I guess, a little more. But I guess with the Welch News I’m trying to convince McDowell County to love itself again, too.”
Residents in McDowell County shared stories of resilience, hardships, hope and despair. They also talked with Moran about the amount of people in the county on federal public assistance.
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McDowell County resident Derek Tyson shows successful businessman Monty Moran an abandoned coal mine.
“From the people of McDowell County who I spoke with, and almost all of them by the way, that the federal assistance that is being received by people there, most of them thought that that federal assistance, while, perhaps intended to do good, has actually been a difficult problem for McDowell County,” Moran said.
Moran also found new ideas and a better understanding of the people.
“I was blown away by how I met, you know, both, Black people and white people in every race you can imagine in McDowell County, and no one cared what race you were,” Moran said. “It was a big family. I mean, there seemed to be no concern about race at all. And perhaps that stems from the fact that there were a huge amount of people from all over the world who came into work in the coal industry there.”
Moran told West Virginia Public Broadcasting he’s working to start a foundation as part of this program but didn’t have many details as it’s in the early stages of development.
“Everywhere we go, we see places that are in need and more than anything, what they need is people’s attention,” Moran said. “They need love. They need intelligence, they need wisdom. And I am definitely staying in touch with the people in McDowell County and in all the other places we did our episodes.”
Tax season is a time that some Americans plan and save for all year. But it’s not always as easy as filling out paperwork before starting work. For independent workers or small business owners in southern West Virginia, it’s one of the most challenging parts of the job.
Nationally, ninety-four percent of the net job growth from 2005 – 2015 was in alternative job markets. With the downturn in the coal industry, some West Virginians are being forced to look to alternative income sources.
A recent report found and documented the challenges that come with being an independent worker in five southern West Virginia counties.
The study was part of the Benefits U project and meant to help better understand the challenges of independent workers in southern West Virginia and test a solution.
Diane L. Browning, project manager for WISER’s Rural Retirement Project, helped to interview independent workers in southern West Virginia.
“There is a widespread need for benefits,” Browning said. “Benefits are an economic stabilizer for a lot of people, (who are) self employed, (they) don’t have easy access to that.”
The study found that independent workers needed help with three main areas of benefits; taxes, emergency savings and retirement savings.
“Unlike employees, their taxes aren’t withdrawn. When they make income, they’re obligated to calculate the amount of taxes they owe and set it aside,” Browning said. “And really, most people just come to terms with that at tax time and find that they owe money.”
The report is part of the Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement, or WISER, and the Rural Retirement Project. The Benefits U project focuses on independent workers including freelancers, hairdressers, childcare providers, tattoo artists, gig workers, small business owners, entrepreneurs and more.
“They feel like they don’t have much money to save when they have trouble making ends meet,” Browning said. “If someone doesn’t have enough money to get the new tire on their car, they’re going to be tapping into their retirement savings.”
Throughout the region, Browning heard stories from West Virginians who had found a way to provide for their family through side jobs, entrepreneurship and service providers but needed help to provide benefits on their own.
“I mean really (the stories) broke my heart, like a guy that had overcome a drug problem, but he really had a hard time getting a job,” Browning said. “So he was doing landscaping on his own and taking care of his four year-old daughter living with his mother.”
Though broadband connectivity or wifi is still inconsistent, financial technology could be a solution because most residents are familiar with online banking and have access to technology.
“I guess the happiest surprise was just how wired we are. And even in the back hill and holler, people have asked for access to smartphones,” Browning said. “And they’re pretty sophisticated about using them. So there’s a lot of opportunity for delivering good services via financial technology.”
The Benefits U project also tested a “FinTech,” or financial technology, solution called Catch. It’s a company that basically does the math for independent workers using a formula that the worker sets up with a smartphone or computer. As the website says, the worker selects benefits, links to a bank, and determines the percentage of each paycheck to set aside.
“One of the messages we heard from in this research is that people really rely on trusted messengers, trusted people in their family, their friends, their co-workers for financial information,” Browning said. “So we are going to promote this financial technology platform with independent workers through organizations that serve them.”
The Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement is helping to raise awareness about Catch within the independent worker community across the state beginning this week, by turning to trusted resource centers in communities across the state. WISER is first partnering with Mountain Heart, a childcare agency, to help spread the word about this platform. The organization also plans to partner with farmers and tech groups such as Central App, a tech training firm.
This story was originally published by Mountain State Spotlight. For more stories from Mountain State Spotlight, visit www.mountainstatespotlight.org.
Veronica and Carl Allen have lived in Wyoming County their entire lives. Like many residents of the state’s southern coalfields, they’re older and have health problems that make them especially vulnerable to COVID-19. For months they’ve lived in fear that they might contract the virus.
Last week, they got a glimmer of hope. On Jan. 13 Gov. Jim Justice made vaccinations available to people 70 and older.
But there was a problem. Instead of getting the vaccine through a local doctor or the county health department, Veronica and Carl were told they’d need to drive more than two hours from their home in Clear Fork to Greenbrier County.
“I was really sorry to hear that they sent our vaccines to Lewisburg,” Veronica Allen said. “I couldn’t stand a trip like that. There’s no way.”
The Allens aren’t alone. In an effort to accelerate the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to West Virginians, the state has been holding a series of centralized vaccination clinics in January, mostly focused in the state’s most populous counties. This is the latest pivot in the state’s vaccination plan, following a surprise announcement at the end of December that left health departments scrambling to begin vaccinating the general public.
“We have been successful in vaccinating tens and tens of thousands,” said Justice, who has been making the rounds in national media coverage of the state’s vaccination successes. “We’re just going to stay right on that.”
But the approach has come with significant downsides. The state’s centralized facilities are less accessible to West Virginians living with high rates of poverty and pre-existing conditions which make the coronavirus especially lethal. Only one of the 10 poorest counties in the state has had a vaccine distribution clinic anytime in the last three weeks, according to an analysis by Mountain State Spotlight.
Map by Ian Hodgson
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Poorest counties
Last week, Dr. Clay Marsh, the state’s coronavirus czar, acknowledged the problems.
“We need to continue to push vaccines to the communities where people live,” Marsh told Mountain State Spotlight. “It certainly sounds like we need to give more help to the folks in McDowell County and Lincoln County and other places.”
And on Thursday, the state announced plans to expand its vaccination hubs so there would be one in each of West Virginia’s 55 counties by early February.
Until then, Justice is urging everyone who’s eligible to make use of the existing vaccination clinics, but health care workers say the current hub system has placed certain West Virginians at an unfair advantage and left rural residents to fall behind.
“The thing that really makes my blood boil is that there’s not equal access,” said Dr. Joanna Bailey, a family physician who serves residents in Wyoming and McDowell — two of the state’s most impoverished counties.
Several of her patients lack access to transportation or have physical ailments that make traveling long distances difficult, if not impossible. But leaving the county is a requirement if patients want to be vaccinated soon.
Last week, Lewisburg was the designated vaccination site for residents living in nine counties, including Bailey’s patients in McDowell and Wyoming.
“There’s no chance in hell that my poor patient from McDowell County is going to be able to travel to Lewisburg on a day’s notice to get a vaccine,” Bailey said. “If the state wants to set up vaccine clinics rather than going through local providers or health departments, that’s fine, but make it fair and make it accessible.”
Despite dozens of vaccines being designated for patients from McDowell County, only three residents on a list of more than 100 were able to make the trip, a health department official said.
A similar problem arose in other counties, too. In Lincoln County where elderly residents who wanted to be vaccinated had to drive up to 45 minutes to Cabell County or go without the vaccine.
“This system is not only unacceptable, but morally wrong for the people that don’t live in one of the counties selected to be a hub,” said Allen Holder the director of emergency services operations for Lincoln County. “Lives in the country matter, too.”
With little notice, some health departments were left unequipped, understaffed and without a communication system in place to efficiently take calls, book appointments and answer questions. In some places, senior citizens waited in lines for hours. In others, some patients were mistakenly given antibody shots — used to treat coronavirus patients — rather than vaccines.
Despite these challenges, demand for the vaccine was plenty. And in more rural counties like McDowell, Wyoming and Lincoln, health officials were vaccinating residents quickly. The biggest question they had was when they’d be getting more doses.
Courtesy
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McDowell County Health Department. Photo courtesy McDowell County Health Department
Those doses never came. The state pivoted and sent large quantities of vaccine to centralized locations in more populous areas instead of distributing smaller numbers of doses equally among all 55 counties. Marsh says it’s largely a matter of logistics.
“Our goals are to create a series of locations that would be able to conveniently serve the population of West Virginia,” he said. “As we are trying to immunize people in the state that aren’t at a facility like a big hospital or big nursing home, we are trying to create vaccine [hubs]… that everybody in West Virginia could access.”
Doing so effectively, said Marsh, requires a large quantity of vaccines, which the state has not received yet. Right now, the clinics are as good as it gets, Marsh said.
The state is planning to address these inequities in early February when it anticipates more doses will become available.
But in the interim, West Virginia’s older rural populations are still waiting.
“If we are only allotted 20 vaccines, that’s fine. Give us 20 vaccines and we’ll get them in people’s arms,” said Bailey, the doctor serving residents in the state’s southernmost counties. “But don’t say ‘there are 50 [for people from McDowell] but they have to travel to Greenbrier to get them.’ That makes no sense. It seems like vaccines are being administered to patients who have the most resources instead of the least.”
Bailey said it’s a sign of both systemic inequality and racism built into health care. Most of her older patients live with chronic diseases that make them more likely to die if they contract COVID-19.
Chronic illnesses like heart and lung disease are especially concentrated in the state’s poorer rural counties. Data analysis by Mountain State Spotlight found that McDowell County has the second-highest rate of resident deaths due to cardiovascular disease and respiratory disease in the state, topped only by Mingo County, which also went without vaccines.
Map by Ian Hodgson
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Sickest counties
Wyoming County had the third highest rate of residents to die from chronic respiratory disease.
Of the 46 clinics to be announced by the state since Jan. 7, only two — in Logan County on Jan. 21 and 22 — will take place in any of West Virginia’s 10 poorest counties.
Poverty isn’t the only factor affecting health. National data shows that Black communities are far more likely to suffer from pre-existing conditions that make the coronavirus lethal. Black residents are also more likely to work in retail and service positions where they may be exposed to the virus.
Yet data on state vaccine distribution shows that Black residents in West Virginia have been vaccinated at about half the rate of white residents in the state.
In the absence of data
Although West Virginia is currently leading the nation in its vaccination rate, and gaining accolades for doing so, the state has primarily aimed for the low-hanging fruit, beginning with health care workers and nursing home staff, and now including some teachers and those who work in higher education.
But as the state receives more doses of the vaccine and moves to vaccinate the general population — people 65 and older as of Jan.19. — the task becomes trickier.
“When you have to get the vaccine distributed out as widely and as quickly as possible, the inequities that already exist have the potential to be further amplified,” said Dr. Elizabeth Miller, director of adolescent and young adult medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Miller has been heading an initiative to encourage vaccination in under-resourced communities.
“Rural communities have been devastated by lack of access to preventive services and comprehensive care,” she said. “It is absolutely critical that rural communities are front and center of vaccine distribution.”
Miller said the key is to find balance between getting the vaccine out as quickly as possible through major distribution hubs — which is what West Virginia is currently doing — and prioritizing the most vulnerable residents who may be difficult to reach. That, she said, is best accomplished through communication with the people working on the ground.
“We have to rely on leaders in our rural communities and listen to them in terms of where and who should be leading the vaccine distribution planning in those areas,” Miller said.
Shweta Bansal, a disease ecologist at Georgetown University, said the choice to target more densely populated areas through vaccine hubs could more rapidly reduce the spread of the coronavirus, but not necessarily drastically decrease mortality.
“One of the arguments for vaccinating in urban centers first would be to prioritize those who transmit most,” Bansal said. “[But] it’s actually quite clear that we really should be prioritizing the most vulnerable first. And the rationale isn’t just an ethical one.”
Evidence from past infection outbreaks shows that prioritizing vulnerable populations like the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions is the best way to reduce the number of deaths.
Like Miller, Bansal said the best way to reach these populations is through direct outreach by health care providers who already serve the community.
One problem researchers like Miller and Bansal see is a lack of data to monitor who is getting vaccinated and where.
West Virginia’s COVID-19 dashboard, maintained by the state Department of Health and Human Resources, displays the number of vaccines distributed by age group and race, but does not record where vaccinations were administered or the number of residents vaccinated by county.
“Data transparency opens doors to more responsive and targeted vaccination campaigns,” said Bansal, who helped develop COVID-19 Vaccination Tracking which collects vaccination data from across the country. Data tracked by her team shows that at least eight states, including Ohio, Illinois and Florida are reporting vaccination data by county, and Bansal said that more should follow suit.
“Without detailed vaccination data, we will continue to be a few steps behind the devastation that the virus is causing,” Bansal said.
‘I just hope I can get that vaccine real soon’
Both experts in-state and out will tell you that rapid vaccine distribution is really hard. It will get better with time.
But the lag-time has its costs, and those costs are being borne by the most disadvantaged residents.
Everyday without the vaccine is a day patients like those served by Bailey are denied access to what could be the difference between life and death, between another hug with a close family member or never seeing them again.
Nathan England
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The former Wyoming Hotel in Mullens, West Virginia.
While residents of counties with clinics are afforded quick access, people like Veronica and Carl Allen from rural Wyoming County face obstacle after obstacle.
Carl, 77, used to work as a coal miner. Later, he worked doing masonry for the Department of Education.
Veronica is a former school bus driver, but after severe glaucoma left her nearly blind, she went to work at the council on aging.
“I’d look at those senior citizens, bless their heart, and I’d think one day that will be me,” Veronica said. “And here I am.”
Veronica is homebound and uses a wheelchair. She has chronic respiratory disease. Carl has suffered several strokes. He’s had a heart attack and has lung problems, and has to wear a machine to help him breathe when he sleeps.
They don’t have any family or kids, but neighbors come into their house a few times a week to help them clean and get their groceries. If either of them got COVID-19 they’d be extremely high risk.
It’s people like them who the current plan has let slip through the cracks.
If West Virginia’s latest iteration of the plan comes to fruition, there will be a clinic in Wyoming County in the next two weeks. But until that actually happens, Veronica and Carl will be waiting.
“I just hope I can get that vaccine soon,” Veronica said.
Reach reporter Lauren Peace at laurenpeace@mountainstatespotlight.org.
