MORGANTOWN– Monongalia County was green Monday.
And much of Monday’s COVID-19 briefing focused on the two maps, on continued confusion about what they mean and continued skepticism that the state is cooking the numbers to get kids back to school.
Gov Jim Justice took multiple questions on that topic, fro different angles but all leading back to the same answers.
For background, Mon County was green on both the daily County Alert System map and the Saturday School Alert System map. Both maps look at two metrics: incidence or infection rate, and positivity rate.
On the County Alert System map, Mon’s infection rate was actually higher than the three previous days, at 13.8%, putting it in the gold. But its positivity rate was 2.69%; anything below 3% is green. The governor’s public health panel uses the better of the two metrics for the county’s color. For the school map, drawing on data from last Thursday, Mon was similarly gold and green.
The first time the question was raised, Justice said, “I really probably take terrible offense to someone that would say we are manipulating numbers.”
He turned it over to Department of Health and Human Resources Secretary Bill Crouch who repeated the explanation for the two metrics: Just reporting infection rates failed.
“What happened before was the incentive was to not test,” he said. People avoided testing to keep the map color yellow or green. Which meant asymptomatic and presymptomatic people were walking around spreading the virus.
Adding the positivity rate offered an incentive to test because it compares positive tests against the total taken, and the science behind it is sound, Crouch said. “We are following the science. We do not manipulate the data.”
Another time, the question highlighted the lack of confidence and overall weariness of much of the public. Justice replied, “I hope and pray they have not lost confidence in it. I hope and pray they are not fatigued badly.”
He noted that across the nation, teacher unions wanted all states to go with a positivity rating of less than 5% to allow kids back in school.
“We were at an impasse,”he said, and returned to the disincentive theme. He acknowledged that more testing brings more positive cases to the surface, but that gives the opportunity to quarantine and treat those cases. “Say what you want but it’s working. … I can’t defend it any more than that. I know it’s difficult. I know it’s confusing.”
He had to defend it again, this time in reference to West Virginia’s adaptations of the Harvard Global Health Institute map, which shows the state mostly yellow and Mon County orange.
Justice pointed out that both the CDC and Kentucky have adopted versions of West Virginia’s system. Then he said, “We’ve been through this too many times.”
Justice repeated his aim for increasing testing to the 7,000 per day goal: “The only way in the world we can stop this thing is to know where the problems are.”
Other COVID news
Justice noted that West Virginia’s Rt value had dropped below 1 for the first time in several weeks. Anything below 1 is good and indicates that the rate of spread has slowed. It was .98, 15th best in the nation at the time Justice spoke and had improved to .94, 11th best, later Monday afternoon.
But Justice pointed to Mon and other counties that have seen significant improvement in their numbers and warned them not to get complacent.
“Think about counties that have dropped drastically in the color code with a tremendous improvement,” he said. “I want you to still be afraid to some degree. … Don’t drop your guard. … It doesn’t mean we can just run through the streets with our masks off and all be good.”
Crouch announced that West Virginia was one of six finalists (excluding the top five winners) for the Center for Digital Government’s State Government Experience awards for its coronavirus dashboard.
The Center explains, “The awards recognize the achievements and best practices of states, cities and counties that are radically improving the experience of government and pushing the boundaries of how citizen services are delivered.”
Tweet David Beard@dbeardtdp Email dbeard@dominionpost.com
