Outbreaks Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

COVID-19 Cases, Outbreaks Continue To Rise In W.Va. Schools

The delta variant of COVID-19 continues to overwhelm West Virginia K-12 education as virus numbers in schools have only risen in recent weeks.

As of Wednesday afternoon, all schools in Preston and Mercer counties have been closed, and students there have switched to remote-style learning through the rest of the week.

The West Virginia Department of Education reports that Preston County closed its schools due to a high level of student absences.

According to Mercer County Schools, its local county health department advised schools in the county to be shuttered due to high rates of community spread.

The WVDE also reports there are 90 outbreaks in West Virginia schools, as of Wednesday, and more than 750 confirmed COVID-19 cases among students, faculty and staff.

All county school systems in the state, except for Putnam and Pocahontas, now have mask mandates inside their buildings.

As W.Va.’s Virus Numbers Trend Upward, Officials Make No Moves Toward Shut Down

As ballot-counting continues nationwide to determine the outcome of the presidential election, new cases of the coronavirus continue to surge. More than 100,000 new cases were counted in the U.S. in just a single day this week – a record. And in West Virginia, 540 new cases of the virus were counted in the past 24 hours.

Gov. Jim Justice said in his latest virtual press briefing that West Virginia has passed the three percent cumulative positivity rate of virus spread. Jump back to the end of April, as the governor announced the state’s reopening plan, 3 percent mark was a determining factor, in which the governor said he would close down the state again.

“Everybody right now is on super-high alert,” Justice said. “Our number of 3 percent that we came up with a long time ago, there’s lots of stuff that has changed since that point in time. And this shouldn’t be a line in the sand that says, you know, this is what we’re going to do, if we cross this, we’re gonna shut down the whole universe … but everybody is awfully concerned.”

Justice did not say if he would shut the state down soon, but noted that he and his team of experts are watching things closely.

West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources Secretary Dr. Bill Crouch explained the determining model has been adjusted based on how much testing is going on. Officials say the focus now is to encourage people to get tested to find asymptomatic carriers.

“We’ve said all along that we have to learn more about this disease as we go forward,” Crouch said. “And we have to change our approach to the disease based upon what we’ve learned … As we learned that the incentive to test was less, looking at just the infection rate, we realized we had to change the system … to get people to test.”

State officials continue to urge West Virginians to practice social distancing, wear masks and take advantage of free testing opportunities around the state to lower the risk of spread.

Meanwhile, 15 more people have died from COVID-19-related causes in the state since Wednesday. There have been more than 500 new cases in the past day, and 280 West Virginians are in the hospital with the potentially deadly virus. Of that figure, 93 are in the ICU and 31 are on ventilators.

These numbers, according to DHHR’s COVID-19 dashboard, have either been climbing in recent weeks or holding steady.

There are also more than 90 confirmed cases in West Virginia’s public schools, which equates to 19 outbreaks. Justice insists these are manageable numbers but also says he is concerned.

Nearly 60 outbreaks have been reported in the state’s long-term care facilities and 17 outbreaks in churches.

There are more than 6,100 active cases of the virus as of Friday afternoon, up by more than 1,200 since Friday of last week.

New Strike Team Formed To Respond To Coronavirus Outbreaks In W.Va. Nursing Homes

A new strike team has been formed to more quickly tackle COVID-19 outbreaks in West Virginia’s nursing homes. The effort is also aimed at better helping smaller facilities in rural areas.

Dr. Ayne Amjad, West Virginia’s state health officer, announced the initiative in a recent virtual press briefing with Gov. Jim Justice and other state officials. She said the new strike team has already been working over the past couple months.

“We have attempted to form a regionalized team within three around the state,” Amjad said. “The team will consist of our National Guard team members as well as partnerships throughout the state. We refer to them as a buddy system.”

The teams are alerted to coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes through a special phone call system at the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources.

After receiving a call from an affected nursing home, a strike team enters the facility within 24-48 hours and begins robust testing measures and cleaning.

“These teams will have consult teams [including] infectious disease specialists, pulmonary specialists, as well as nursing home specialist teams,” she said. “We’ve partnered with other physicians and consult teams at WVU Medicine, Marshall University, as well as other Hospital Association members.”

Amjad said the state had already been responding to outbreaks in nursing homes, but she said the key differences with the new strike teams are the number of partners involved and a now dedicated focus to reach more rural areas.

“We’re asking volunteer consult teams to participate a little more actively,” she said. “The local health departments were always running to the fire with us, as well as the National Guard, and they’re still participating in the strike team. This is more of a focused group [that would help] a nursing home that’s in a very small, rural community that might not have resources as perhaps a larger nursing home.”

In Wednesday’s virtual press briefing with the governor, Justice said there are currently 43 outbreaks in the state’s long-term care facilities.

W.Va. Department Of Education To Post Virus Outbreaks At Schools Daily

West Virginia schools that are experiencing outbreaks of COVID-19 will now be identified daily on the West Virginia Department of Education’s website.

Gov. Jim Justice announced in a virtual press briefing Friday that outbreaks at West Virginia’s primary and secondary schools are defined as two or more cases that are connected to each other.

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources and the Department of Education are partnering to update the list daily.

The change comes after reporting by the Charleston Gazette-Mail spurred questions over why cases in schools were not being publicly reported.

West Virginia Superintendent of Schools Clayton Burch said he will be meeting everyday with DHHR to discuss the list.

“We will every day post the outbreaks that are active, the schools, the number of cases,” Burch said, “And we’re even going to post if that outbreak led to a school going to remote learning.”

Burch also noted the Department of Education is hoping to hire more school nurses. He said, right now, there are 450 school nurses employed in the state. New funding from the West Virginia Legislature could help hire more, although Burch did not specify how many new nurses would be hired.

Kanawha County Goes Orange On Color-Coded Community Spread Map For COVID-19

Kanawha County is the latest to advance in the state’s color-coded map for community coronavirus spread in counties.

It moved into the orange zone from 9.7 average daily cases per 100,000 people on a rolling 7-day average Sunday, to nearly 12 on Tuesday.

“Nobody said this was going to be easy, and nobody ever said a pandemic would not be something that would be very difficult for all of us to deal with it,” Gov. Jim Justice said during a regularly scheduled, virtual press briefing Wednesday. “And we’re doing it and we’re doing a great job, but we got to get these counties out of orange. That’s for sure.”

Logan and Monroe counties were also in orange on the state’s color-coded map for community spread. That means state officials have tracked 10 to 24.9 daily cases in these counties per 100,000 people, either on the 7-day rolling average or a 14-day rolling average for counties with less than 16,000 people.

The state is using the map for school reopenings after the first day of in-person classes begins Sept. 8. The map also applies to after-school activities like sports and rules for nursing home visits and group activities.

If school was already in session, being in the orange zone on the map for Kanawha and the other two counties would mean mandatory face coverings for students in the third grade and older, no large group assemblies and a more concerted effort from local health and school officials to mitigate further disease spread.

For any county in the red, with more than 25 daily average cases per 100,000 people – this was Logan county until Tuesday – in-person classes would be suspended.

In all three orange counties and others currently marked yellow or green, the state was on Wednesday tracking 39 outbreaks in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. It was also monitoring 29 active cases of COVID-19 across four churches and more than 20 positive coronavirus results among prisoners at the Mount Olive Correctional Center in Fayette County.

Outbreaks in state jails, prisons and nursing homes only count as one person in the state’s color-coded map for community spread, except for infected employees, who the governor’s office said on Aug. 17 will count as whole individuals. State health officials have said this is because they fear outbreaks in congregant settings will skew results.

The map has been revised and tweaked at least twice since state officials first introduced it on Aug. 14. A similar, more stringent color-coded map from the Harvard Global Health Institute shows Monroe and Logan counties in the red.

West Virginia has had more than 9,500 cases of COVID-19 since March. More than 1,700 cases are still active, and there were 190 deaths from the coronavirus by Wednesday.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.