RFA 2019 Story Archives - Page 3 of 24 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

New Nursing Home Order Takes Effect Tuesday, As State Tracks 31 Related Outbreaks

An executive order from West Virginia’s governor will take effect Tuesday morning, adding some flexibility for nursing home visitations as the state continues monitoring more than 30 outbreaks in long-term care facilities.

West Virginians will follow the same color-coded map the state rolled out for schools on Aug. 14, to determine whether it’s safe or not for them to visit a nursing home, Gov. Jim Justice said on Monday.

His new order rescinds an Aug. 12 order, which temporarily barred people from visiting residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

The color-coded map is assembled based on the active COVID-19 cases per population and it’s designed to monitor the severity of community spread. The Department of Health and Human Resources has modified the map twice since its introduction almost two weeks ago.

Counties in green and yellow will allow in-person visits to long-term care facilities by appointment only, with certain restrictions on age and location, according to the DHHR’s reopening plan from Aug. 20.

Counties in orange and red will only allow visits for compassionate care.

The color-coded system additionally creates restrictions to communal dining, group activities and rules for nonessential personnel. In all counties, staff are responsible for screening residents daily.

“I urge everyone to contact your local nursing home and arrange for those visits during those pandemics,” DHHR Cabinet Secretary Bill Crouch said Monday.

Logan was the only red county Monday afternoon, and Monroe was the only county in orange. The state has reported active outbreaks at nursing homes in both communities, in addition to Grant, Kanawha, Mercer, Raleigh and Taylor counties.

CEO Marty Wright for the West Virginia Health Care Association, a trade group representing most of West Virginia’s long-term care facilities, said Monday that greater community spread and longer lags in testing results are what’s driving the increase in nursing home outbreaks.

“What we’ve seen is that asymptomatic spread has presented a challenge across the board,” Wright said. “It gets into a facility and no one knows it.”

For the Springfield Center in Monroe County, where CEO Larry Pack said Monday roughly 30 out of 50 patients have tested positive since last week, the outbreak began with one employee testing positive.

“If we have one positive employee, or one positive patient, we test every employee and every patient in the center,” said Pack, who runs 17 West Virginia nursing homes through Stonerise Healthcare.

About 25 employees at Springfield also have tested positive since last week. Pack said all staff and patients in Monroe County will be tested weekly until everyone tests negative.

Weekly testing is the protocol for all West Virginia nursing homes experiencing an outbreak. However, the process has become more difficult as the need for testing resources grows in schools, correctional centers and other places, according to Wright.

Nationally, there’s a push to offer more antigen testing in long-term care facilities just because the tests are easier to process. Unfortunately, Wright said, there’s still debate as to whether antigen results are as accurate as the more common PCR testing.

“There is the concern, whether or not it has a significant enough sensitivity to allow for it to be used,” Wright said.

So far, the West Virginia Health Care Association reports two West Virginia facilities have received equipment for antigen testing.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

W.Va. Prison Officials Monitor COVID-19 Cases At Mount Olive

West Virginia prison officials have identified three prisoner COVID-19 cases at the Mount Olive Correctional Center in Fayette County as of Monday.

Three prisoners at Mount Olive and three employees tested positive for the coronavirus by Monday afternoon, according to data from the state Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“Corrections did what they’ve been doing over and over, just running to the fire,” Justice said during a regularly scheduled virtual press briefing Monday.

According to DCR spokesman Lawrence Messina, staff tested all of the prisoners occupying the housing unit where two active cases of the coronavirus were identified.

The DCR also tested randomly selected prisoners from the other five housing units at Mount Olive.

All tests from the Mount Olive medical unit, which the DCR tested in its entirety, came back negative on Monday.

Whether DCR tests everyone at Mount Olive depends on the roughly 185 pending results from Mount Olive prisoners and input from the state Bureau for Public Health.

There are 1,020 prisoners total at the Mount Olive correctional center and work camp.

Less than two weeks ago, the DCR tested all prisoners and staff at the South Central Regional Jail, where roughly 60 people have tested positive for the virus since then.

By Monday afternoon, the division reported 57 prisoners had recovered from the coronavirus. The facility remains on lockdown, according to Justice.

Systemwide, there are 14 employees, including six workers in Charleston and three at the regional jail in Raleigh County, who have tested positive for the coronavirus. They are all self-quarantining from home, according to Messina.

All 10 regional jails were over capacity Sunday afternoon, despite guidance from state court officials to local courts and a new law to reduce jail overcrowding.

No prisons were over capacity.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

This story was corrected on Tuesday, August 25, 2020, to report the accurate number of empoyees who have active cases of COVID-19 at Mount Olive. Only three employees and three prisoners by Monday had active cases of the coronavirus.

W.Va. Jails Still Overcrowded During Pandemic, Despite New Law For Pretrial Release

Almost 60 prisoners had tested positive for the coronavirus by Thursday at the South Central Regional Jail in Charleston.

As the facility experiences overcrowding — there were 73 more people than reported beds at the Charleston jail on Thursday, and officials say almost 57 percent of the population there was pretrial — advocates for criminal justice reform are once more renewing calls to local courts and prosecutors to incarcerate fewer people.

One “tool at their disposal,” according to Lida Shepherd with the American Friends Service Committee, is a law that took effect in June, establishing a new process for the release of pretrial defendants facing certain nonviolent misdemeanor charges.

House Bill 2419 calls on judges to release people with eligible charges on non-cash “personal recognizance” bonds, or using methods other than incarceration like home arrest to ensure people charged with certain non-violent offenses don’t skip their own trial.

If a judge finds cash bail is necessary, the new law prohibits them from charging more than three times the maximum fine for an offense.

If a defendant doesn’t qualify automatically for pretrial release on personal recognizance or cash bail, the law requires judges to hold a hearing up to three days after someone is placed in jail, to again consider alternatives to incarceration.

“Since the bail bill went into effect in June, we’ve actually seen an increase in pretrial incarceration, which is the opposite of its intended effect,” Shepherd said. “We’re incredibly concerned about the overcrowded jail facilities… this just has enormous implications for our ability to kind of keep this virus under control in the state.”

Shepherd is part of a coalition of groups, including West Virginia chapters of Americans for Prosperity and the ACLU, which helped pass that law and others dealing with criminal justice reform.

Before the law went into effect in June, staff for the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals also issued guidance to local courts in March, encouraging magistrates and public defenders to consider more people in jail for PR bonds or alternative sentencing, like home arrest.

But several prosecutors and magistrates tasked with implementing the law say they’re upholding their end of the deal.

“Overcrowding has been a problem since the institution of the regional jail system,” Raleigh County prosecutor Brian Parsons said Monday.

Parsons reported there were 117 people at the Southern Regional Jail in Raleigh County last Thursday, Aug. 13, on charges from his office.

Several employees there have tested positive for the coronavirus at Southern Regional Jail, and the DCR lists two prisoners as having recovered from the virus.

In Raleigh County, Parsons said local criminal justice officials hold weekly meetings to evaluate which defendants are safe to release before their trial, and who, for public safety reasons, must stay in jail.

“We’re trying to identify people who are in jail and are being held because they’re just financially incapable of securing their own release,” Parsons said. “We feel strongly that you shouldn’t be held incarcerated just because you couldn’t make bail.”

Prosecutors can ask to reduce a bail amount or use PR bond instead, after a defendant’s arraignment. Magistrates are the ones responsible for determining bail amounts or bond when a person is first arrested and brought to the court.

“If law enforcement arrests them, we have to arraign them — there’s nothing we can do,” Harrison County magistrate Paul Osborn said. “A police officer’s got to do their jobs.”

Kanawha County magistrate Rusty Casto said he’s still seeing just as many substance-related charges now as he did before the pandemic.

“A lot of people just have mental health issues when they come in here,” Casto said. “You can tell they don’t really need to be in jail, but they shouldn’t really be on the streets. … You just try to do what you think is right on the information you have.”

In Kanawha County, prosecutor Chuck Miller said he’s been advising members of his office against incarceration if defendants awaiting their court dates don’t need to be in jail.

“I’d like to think that we’ve always taken the position that if we don’t think they’re a danger to the public, and we don’t think they’re going to flee to Mexico, leave them out,” Miller said. “We don’t think they’re a risk.”

Although jail populations dropped by nearly 30 percent in March following guidance from the supreme court to local courts, jails have resumed overcrowding into the summer — nine out of 10 jails were over capacity on Tuesday, and there were almost 5,500 people in West Virginia jails statewide, 1,400 more than there were in mid-April.

Miller said part of the reason he thinks South Central in Charleston is overcrowded is the fact prisoners in Charleston are still waiting for the DCR to move them to prison, after they’ve been sentenced.

DCR spokesperson Lawrence Messina said on Wednesday 1,800 out of roughly 5,500 West Virginians in jail are waiting to be transferred to prison. At South Central Regional Jail, 160 out of roughly 530 prisoners are awaiting transport.

The division is holding off on all non-emergency transports, Messina said, to avoid coronavirus spread or exposure.

There are a little more than 300 prisoners, or about 57 percent of the South Central Jail population, who are being held pretrial.

“I’m not sure we have a ready-made solution to overcrowding,” Miller said. “Changing the law … I think that certainly gave judges and magistrates an easy way out, but the people who are released on PR [bond] and violate the law … what do you do with them?”

Prosecutor Rachel Romano in Harrison County said she thinks House Bill 2419 has made an impact statewide, by streamlining how magistrates determine bond amounts and creating the presumption for PR bonds.

Members from her office, local public defenders and the day report center met weekly prior to the pandemic to reconsider bond and bail amounts for people on misdemeanor charges from Harrison County.

“It made a difference,” Romano said. “There were certainly individuals on a weekly basis that we could identify as someone who we could lower their bond, or someone who was ready to plead.”

As for the bounce back in jail populations since June, Romano said earlier in the pandemic her office and likely others agreed on PR bonds for people who aren’t getting the same grace now, because they’ve violated the terms of their bond and committed more crimes while on release.

“In the beginning, we made a very concerted effort, not knowing what COVID-19 was, to get as many defendants on PR bonds as we could. … to reduce the [jail] population,” Romano said. “We still make a concerted effort. But there are some cases we can’t help, we have to argue for incarceration. … We’re only doing our job when we argue for incarceration at that time.”

The Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation identified 59 prisoners at South Central Regional Jail with COVID-19 on Thursday, according to a press release. There was one additional prisoner with COVID-19 at the Mount Olive Correctional Center in Fayette County, and 16 employees statewide who had tested positive for the coronavirus.

The DCR has tested all staff and prisoners at South Central, and the division also placed the facility on lockdown. On Tuesday, the DCR said all of the prisoners with COVID-19 are kept in five out of 24 housing units.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

First W.Va. Child Is Diagnosed With Inflammatory Disease Linked To COVID-19

West Virginia health officials reported the state’s first case of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children, or MIS-C, on Tuesday.

The disease is associated with exposure to the coronavirus. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that MIS-C tends to affect children two to four weeks after they’re infected with the coronavirus, causing different body parts like the heart and lungs to become inflamed.

Commissioner Dr. Ayne Amjad from the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health said in a press release Tuesday the development was “an unfortunate reminder that COVID-19 does not just affect the elderly.”

“We must continue to be diligent in our efforts to protect each other by social distancing, wearing masks in public and following all recommendations of local, state and federal health experts,” Amjad said.

The DHHR did not provide any additional information on the child’s location or wellbeing.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 570 children with MIS-C nationwide at the end of July. The CDC also reported 10 deaths.

So far, pediatric experts like Dr. Kathryn Moffett, who is a pediatric infectious disease specialist at West Virginia University, say MIS-C is rare, but there’s still a lot of unknowns about the disease and how the coronavirus infects children in general.

“We shut down schools in March, and so children have really not been the ones out in the community,” Moffett said. “They have a little bit, but they’re not the ones going to bars, gyms. They’re not going to work. So, what we’ve seen in children is a little falsely reassuring. They are different because they haven’t all been together.”

Dr. Mariana Lanata at Marshall Health, a pediatric infections diseases physician, said that while MIS-C is new to West Virginia, it doesn’t change the conversation around young people and the coronavirus much.

“I don’t think that having the first case of MIS-C changes that conversation,” Lanata said. “To me, the conversation has always been the same. We need to be very cautious. Every school needs to have an appropriate plan.”

Lanata said she encourages families to pay attention to resources like a color-coded map on risk to communities from the state Department of Education, which will help local school districts determine closures and reopenings.

“Every family needs to address their own risks individually, as a family, and decide whether sending their kids to school is a good idea for them or not,” Lanata said. “Because depending on your family, your risk might be different, right?”

Both Lanata and Moffett say MIS-C isn’t contagious, but the coronavirus is. She and other experts encourage mask-wearing, good hygiene and social distancing, especially as schools begin to reopen next month.

On Thursday morning there had been nearly 9,000 cases of the coronavirus in West Virginia, 1,800 of which are active.

The state has conducted almost 378,000 tests since March and recorded 166 deaths due to COVID-19.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

State Superintendent Says Pandemic Highlights ‘Inequity’ Among Students

Before schools closed for the coronavirus pandemic earlier in March, state superintendent Clayton Burch said he always thought of public education as a “great equalizer.”

“After March 13, I don’t know that I would stand here and continue saying that, when we found out how many equity issues we identified,” Burch said Monday at a meeting of the House Education Committee.

Burch told House delegates that the West Virginia Department of Education has spent months learning about disparities in students’ access to technology and internet services, mental health resources, as well as helping students with special needs.

WVDE found more than half the state’s students lack reliable internet access away from their brick and mortar schools, Burch said, and the department also discovered that just a few more than 20 school districts had additional nurses, social workers and counselors on hand for students with increased emotional needs resulting from the pandemic.

“We have some major, major equity issues when it comes to social, emotional and mental health,” Burch said.

Solution Now A ‘Band-Aid’ For Greater, More Expensive Problem

Some of the state’s solutions for technology and broadband access are a “Band-Aid” at best, Burch said.

That includes the state’s “Kids Connect Initiative,” for which the state is spending $6 million on outfitting schools, parks and libraries with hot spot technology that students can access outside a brick and mortar structure.

Students living in West Virginia’s more rural communities, farther away from the institutions that will host these connectivity points, will still struggle to complete more remote schoolwork from home. For students in this position, WVDE says school districts will offer students transportation to the hotspots.

“I appreciate the thousand points of WiFi that we’re targeting,” Burch said. “I think it’s a great project, but it is a Band-Aid. And it is still just a Band-Aid. Many of the counties are going above and beyond using these dollars trying to get service directly into the homes.”

School districts are supposed to provide transportation for students who wish to use the hotspots, and don’t live close enough to get their themselves.

Del. Lisa Zuckoff, D-Marshall, asked Burch on Monday what it would cost to upgrade broadband services statewide, so all students have access.

“It’s so much. It’s just so, so much,” Burch said. “We don’t have six to 10 years to wait for fiber to get to every home. So, I think the question becomes, how do we fund something they say takes so much work? Because our children, they can’t wait.”

Some schools, using their own money from a state Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSERF), are better honing broadband access, Burch said.

West Virginia has allocated $78 million total to all 55 school districts from the ESSERF, through money from the CARES Act.

Top receivers include Kanawha County, at more than $8.3 million, Cabell at nearly $5 million, and Wood and Berkeley counties hovering around $4 million.

More than 60 percent of those funds are dedicated to technology for remote and virtual learning by Aug. 3, according to WVDE. More than 50,000 West Virginia parents had registered for online learning Monday, according to incomplete data from counties to WVDE.

Other funding, including another $8.6 million from the CARES Act and money WVDE saved canceling in-person conferences for personnel, are being channeled into projects that address three tiers of the state’s student inequities.

Those tiers are services to help students’ social and emotional wellbeing, services to address technology disparities and aimed at narrowing the state’s achievement gap.

Classroom Sizes, Ventilation

WVDE also posted a list of school districts that have shared their reopening plans with the state office, and whether those plans are on par with WVDE’s guidelines for remote learning, transitions to remote learning, cleanliness, social distancing and preparedness.

Several schools as of Monday afternoon still did not have policies in place for distancing children in school buses and remote learning. Burch said schools have until their first days of class to solve this and share a new plan with his department.

Educators on the House Education Committee, which met Monday, asked Burch for specifics on classroom sizes, social-distancing protocols and administrative items like sick leave for teachers and logged absences for students.

Del. Cody Thompson, D-Randolph, said he’ll be teaching a civics class with 28 students in a classroom too small for social distancing.

“I just don’t see how it’s possible,” Thompson said of seating students at least six feet apart. “I have 30 desks and we’ve reduced it down to 28 [students] for this one particular class in high school civics, where all the students face one direction and I have maybe three, five feet in front of the classroom, for like a walkway exit.”

“I’ll tell you my recommendation, and this’ll be Clayton’s recommendation,” Burch said. “Those are high school students in a classroom of 28 that does not have the space … my reading of this would be they can’t social distance, there’s no reason those students cannot wear a mask.”

“Who would make decision?” Thompson asked. “I think that my classroom is too small for that number of students. … where do we go then?”

Burch said an administrator or local superintendent will have to decide what to do with Thompson’s classroom. “The county plans are going to have to drive this, but as we review them, we’ll look for those consistencies,” he added.

Del. Mark Dean, R-Mingo, is a school principal in Mingo County. He had questions Monday concerning classroom size limits and earlier initiatives from WVDE that favor collaborative, team activities between students.

Burch said school districts have the flexibility to determine in their plans how to appropriately limit the number of students in one room, including separating classes into groups and staggering the days they’re in school, or innovative seating arrangements.

Burch said schools with aging buildings and ventilation concerns are welcome to invite WVDE officials to a walkthrough of their facilities, to ensure HVAC and water are running smoothly.

“Because these places have been shut down since March, we’re asking them to also do a walkthrough of your water system,” Burch said. “Make sure your water system is up to date, you flush, it is prepared. … For any county that would like assistance with that, we have a crew that goes out and does that walk through with them.”

Reopening Community Colleges, Universities

Chancellor Sarah Tucker for the Higher Education Policy Commission told the House Education Committee that Monday was a “big day in higher ed,” as Concord University, Glenville State College, Fairmont State University and West Liberty University reopened campuses to students.

West Virginia State University was the first to reopen Aug. 10, followed by Bluefield State College Aug. 13. Marshall, Shepherd and West Virginia universities plan to reopen later this month.

Each school’s policy for reopening is its own, but Tucker said Monday all public schools had to follow guidelines from the state – including statewide testing of university students.

Students at community colleges are left out from this requirement, Tucker said, because they don’t have students living in dormitory halls.

As members of the committee heard from Tucker on schools that have reopened or are prepared to do so, news broke that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was returning to online learning after COVID-19 breakouts quickly hit the campus at the start of the semester.

Tucker acknowledged these concerns in her remarks, but also outlined ways that staying home could harm young adults.

“We have a lot of students who are neither in school and they aren’t working,” Tucker said, “and I do believe that idle hands often lead to things that we don’t want to see … I’m very worried about our students becoming disconnected from our schools.”

Schools are required to reopen for K-12 by Sept. 8.

First Parents Graduate From Boone County Family Treatment Court

Normally, Boone County Circuit Judge William Thompson holds his drug court graduation ceremonies inside the courthouse.

But on a slightly overcast August afternoon, he found himself and the first two graduating members of his family treatment court outdoors at Waterways Park in Boone County.

The water slides and pool were shut down to limit the spread of the coronavirus, but a picnic area by the walking trails was still open for those who wanted to gather and celebrate at a safe distance from one another.

Boxed lunches were stacked on a table off to the side, so attendees didn’t have to mingle to eat. Most people were wearing cloth face masks, and several brought their own lawn chairs.

Boone County Circuit Judge William Thompson speaks at a graduation ceremony on August 12, 2020, for his family treatment court.

“A lot of times my favorite part of graduation is the cake that comes with it,” Thompson told his audience Tuesday – a mix of state and local court officials, lawmakers, employees from child protective services and other members of his family treatment program. “Unfortunately, we can’t do cake with the pandemic. So, you do have an individual cookie.”

Family treatment court works like adult and juvenile drug court, but instead of offering recovery as an alternative to jail time, family treatment court is designed to help parents dealing with addiction avoid permanently losing custody of their children.

The parents who join the program work with a team of experts who not only connect participants to recovery resources, but introduce them to employment opportunities and educational programs for parenting and continued recovery. Parents also get regular, supervised visits with their children until they’re ready for reunification.

“They love their child, and they want to do what they can to get their child back in their home and be a mom and dad,” Thompson said. “They want to be able to provide a home for that child.”

Sabrina Ward speaks at her graduation ceremony for family treatment court in Boone County on August 12, 2020.

That includes parents like Sabrina Ward and her partner Matt Blackshire, who graduated Tuesday. They entered family treatment court in October for their daughter Adalynn, who they had lost custody of earlier that month due to addictions to methampetamines.

The program wasn’t easy. There were a lot of requirements, like weekly meetings with the judge, visits from child protective services, several weekly drug screenings and parenting classes.

Ward relapsed in November – but today, she’s been substance free for more than nine months. Both her and Blackshire also found jobs through the program.

“I was tired of that life,” she said in remarks to the audience at her graduation. “Since I have been sober, I’ve been able to pay off all my debt. I’ve bought things I want, Matt bought a car, I buy things for my child when I want and I started working at my first job ever.”

Although Adalynn returned home to her parents in April with regular supervision from the court, many parents in the program only saw their kids over video conferencing for months, due to guidance from the Department of Health and Human Resources that Child Protective Services temporarily halt in person visits for the coronavirus pandemic.

According to Thompson, what helped his participants the most at that time was the bonds they made with other parents in the program.

“I was not counting on them building a community with each other,” Thompson said. “They were all supportive. They all wanted the same main goal, which was to get their families back, which is something you don’t always see in adult drug court or even juvenile drug court.”

Going forward, as other participants graduate and the Boone County program grows, Thompson said he’d like to increase the communication and sense of community between parents.

Ward plans on creating an alumni group.

Family treatment court is active in four other counties – Nicholas, Roane, Ohio and Randolph – through grants from the West Virginia Office of Drug Control Policy. During Tuesday’s graduation, state Supreme Court Justice Tim Armstead announced more ODCP funding will be used to open family treatment courts in Braxton, Logan and McDowell counties.

The Boone County family treatment court – the first of its kind of West Virginia – received a three-year grant in 2019 for nearly $600,000 from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.