Private and state park campgrounds will reopen to out-of-state guests starting June 10, Gov. Jim Justice announced Wednesday. Their stays will be limited to seven days.
“We surely don’t want people coming here from out of state and just taking up some level of permanency … that’s not what we’re looking for right now,” he said.
When asked about the reason for delaying opening state and private campgrounds to out-of-state residents when federal campgrounds already have done so, the governor said it boiled down to data.
Basically that they wanted to see the COVID-19 numbers after Memorial Day weekend — and make sure trends remained satisfactory.
“I think we’ve done it in the right way,” he said.
Correctional facilities
Statewide COVID-19 testing has begun at state corrections facilities, starting in the Northern and Eastern Panhandles, Justice said: Three jails, two prisons and two juvenile centers.
More than 1,000 inmates and 500 employees have been tested so far. Northern Panhandle testing was expected to wrap up Wednesday and statewide testing by June 12.
At Huttonsville Correctional Center, which recently experienced an outbreak, seven of the eight staff who’d tested positive have recovered and one is back to work; 21 of the 118 inmates who were positive have also recovered.
Unemployment
WorkForce West Virginia Director Scott Adkins said the agency has received 250,000 claims in the past 10 weeks, compared to 46,862 in all of 2019 — more than five times as many in 10 weeks than in all 52 weeks of 2019.
They’ve paid out $701 million for the claims, he said. About 5% of the claims have had issues they’re still working through, and some need adjudication, which takes several weeks.
Adkins offered some warnings about fraud. They’ve received several hundred claims from people who never filed, he said: Others stole their IDs and filed using their names.
They’ve also received claims from people stealing other folks’ IDs and filing in their names, along with claims from bogus IP addresses from other states and countries.
As a result, he said, some additional safeguards are being put in place for applications.
Adkins said suspected fraud can be reported by calling 1-800-379-1032, Option 6.
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