MORGANTOWN — West Virginia continues to lead the nation in COVID vaccine administration, Gov. Jim Justice and his team said Friday, but supply remains a challenge.
“Our problem right now is we can’t get enough vaccine from the feds,” Department of Health and Human Resources Secretary Bill Crouch said.
As of Friday, the state had administered 124,325 of 132,700 first doses on hand, a 93.7% rate, and 22,612 of 28,275 second doses, an 80% rate. The various vaccine data trackers show West Virginia as tops in the nation for getting shots into arms.
Justice quoted a portion of a National Review article that The Dominon Post has brought to his office’s attention: “Right now, West Virginia is doing a bang-up job of getting its residents vaccinated, and just about every other state should be looking over that state’s collective shoulder and asking, ‘Hey, what are they doing right that we ought to be doing, too?’”
Operation SOW, Justice said, has put 34,529 first doses and 2,900 second doses into resident age 75 and up, and the plan is to drop the SOW age from 70 to 65 next week, per new CDC guidelines, as Justice said previously. “I don’t want them to hold up the number of vaccines we’re sending out because we didn’t follow their lead.”
And 17 Operation SOW clinics are planned for next week, he said.
A reported raised the issue, reported in national media, that a federal promise to get more vaccines out of the reserve stockpiles and out to the states is empty because the reserves are drained.
Justice said he doesn’t know what’s going on with the feds. Promises from them keep changing. A promise of 60,000 doses (including second doses) next week – double the expected amount was rescinded and changed to the original allotment of 25,000.
“That may very well change in two hours,” he said. “What I’ve go to do, is I’ve got to continue to try with all in me to get our numbers increased.”
Part of the vaccination plan is to vaccinate all school teachers and staff age 50 and up across the state. The Dominion Post posed a question from Preston County, asking why there is no plan to get teachers and staff vaccinated next week.
The specific Preston question wasn’t answered, but Joint Interagency Task Force leader James Hoyer said that 9,700 teachers age 50 and up have been vaccinated in the last two days and 19,000 teachers and service personnel total in the last two weeks.
The state Department of Education has worked with each county school board to coordinate those vaccinations for age 50 and up, Hoyer said.
Justice pointed out that the Department if Education identified 24,000 teachers and staff over 50, so 19,000 is a good turnout rate – about 80%.
COVID numbers
As always, Justice took time to mention all who died since his last breifing. The number was 62 since Wednesday and 1,733 total.
But there were some positive numbers. The Rt rate – the estimate of the rate of spread – was .90, best in the nation.
Total active cases, at 27,016, showed a slight decline. The daily positivity rate had dropped sharply from Tuesday – from 9.88% to 5.17%.
But Justice cautioned not to make too much of that. “One robin doesn’t make spring, does it,” he said. “We’ve still got a long, long ways to go.”
Tweet David Beard@dbeardtdp Email dbeard@dominionpost.com
