MORGANTOWN — The color-coded school re-entry metric announced Friday has undergone its first tweak, with some tightening of the numbers for the green and yellow categories.
Gov. Jim Justice prefaced his explanation of the tweak by saying there had been some “saber rattling of the media” over the weekend, and some people saying his office skewed the metric to force kids to go back to school.
He called that “preposterous. … We came up something that’s revolutionary, to tell you the truth.”
But based on comments, Justice said, they’ve tweaked the metric, which is based on the Harvard Global Heath Institute’s COVID risk dashboard. One significant difference between the two is that Harvard counts every COVID-positive prison inmate or nursing home resident as a single case.
West Virginia, he said, counts all positives in a congregate setting – a jail or nursing home – as a single case in order to focus more specifically on community spread.
One tweak recognizes that jail and nursing home staff leave the facility and go into the community. So the metric will count each staffer as a single case instead of half a case as announced Friday.
The other tweak adjusts the number of cases per 100,000 population to conform more closely to Harvard’s model.
As announced Friday, the green range was 0-7 cases per 100,000; now it’s 0-3. Yellow was 8-19; now it’s 3-9. Orange, which affects sports events, was 16-24; now it’s 10-24. Red is the same, 25 and up.
The Harvard model sets green as less than 1 and yellow as 1-9. West Virginia’s is more generous, Justice said, because “we’re challenging all of our counties to try to do as good as possible. … Every county wants to get in the green.”
Harvard’s narrow green range, he said, would discourage counties from every feeling like they could get out of the yellow. “I want our people to all feel like they have an opportunity to win. … It gets us to where we feel better.”
COVID-19 Czar Clay Marsh elaborated on West Virginia’s differences from the Harvard model, calling them smart and innovative.
Harvard’s doesn’t distinguish community spread from community and congregate combined, he said. The wider green threshold “I think is really important because we live in a small-population state.” In provides incentive to stay in the green, maintain community health and get kids back to school.
“We don’t want a whole generation of people that need to catch up for the rest of their life,” he said.
The Dominion Post asked how an outbreak at WVU would affect Monongalia County, and if an outbreak in Morgantown would close Clay-Battelle High School at the other end of the county – a 30-40 minute drive. The CBHS question didn’t get answered.
But Marsh and Department of Health and Human Resources Secretary Bill Crouch said that each WVU student who tests positive will be counted as part of Mon County but also also communicated back to their county of residence to allow for contract tracing and any necessary quarantining at both places.
The Dominion Post also asked if any portions of WVU would qualify a congregate settings where all positives would count as a single case. Justice responded that inmates and nursing home residents don’t go in and out. University students come and go to various sites so its more apprpopriate to count them as individuals.
Monday’s metric map showed Logan County in the red, with neighbors Mingo, Lincoln and Boone in organge. In the north, Taylor County also was orange. Mon was yellow; Preston and Marion green.
DHHR’s COVID numbers showed 1,941 active positives Sunday, down from 1,975 Saturday and 1,999 Friday. New positive cases are declining: 166 Friday, 113 Saturday, 65 Sunday.
West Virginia’s Rt value, estimating the rate of spread, stood at .95 Monday – anything below 1 is good and means the virus will stop spreading – the 13th-best rate in the nation.
Tweet David Beard@dbeardtdp Email dbeard@dominionpost.com
