MORGANTOWN – Vaccine news continues to take the forefront at the govenor’s COVID-19 briefings.
Gov. Jim Justice on Friday highlighted a letter from a Minnesota state senator who praised West Virginia’s vaccine program and asked for advice on what the state is doing right as Minnesota struggles.
COVID-19 Czar Clay Marsh followed up on that, tailoring his usual message of working together to the context of the senator’s letter. “This united purpose that we share here is something that is really important for the rest of the country as well,” he said. National media is “just figuring out the greatness of our state is the greatness of our people.”
The Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine is now before the FDA, he said, to evaluate J&J’s application for an Emergency Use Authorization so it can begin distribution.
Data shows a 45% reduction in deaths from December to January and a 50% reduction in hospitalizations, which they link to the state’s vaccination program and strategy of targeting the elderly and most vulnerable.
Joint Interagency Task Force Director James Hoyer said he was asked this week by national reporters what the state is doing right.
He told them, he said, that Justice early on established the task force and gave it a set of priorities and a focus. “It focuses our energy on specific efforts,” and it limits and mitigates challenges.
“We’re in a race to vaccinate those who have the greatest chance of dying and the greatest chance of being hospitalized,” he said. We’re also in a race to vaccinate as many people as possible before the COVID variants, with their additional challenges, arrive here.
Justice’s team fielded a question about donating blood, and if people who’ve been vaccinated can give blood and pass along helpful antibodies to others.
Bureau of Public Health Commissioner Ayne Amjad said no. The vaccine trains the immune system to activate antibodies when the virus is contracted.
Marsh agreed. But people who’ve had COVID are encouraged to donate convalescent plasma, which contains more than antibodies. It also contains a lot of other immune factors that can help hospitalized people in other ways.
Justice will deliver his State of the State Address Wednesday, the first day of the legislative session, and he fielded a couple questions on how he’ll be adapting it for COVID.
The address is given in the House chamber, with legislators, other officials and guests packing the galleries and the floor clear up to the press tables, where Justice sits at a podium between them.
Justice didn’t have many details – he said those will be left to the House, which controls the chamber. But the chamber won’t be crowded. “It’ll be right and we’ll be spread out.”
The Dominion Post asked about a rumor circulating that masks will be optional.
Justice said, “There’s not a chance on this planet that’s come from us. If you’re in the Capitol building and you don’t have a mask on you’ve got an issue, that’s for sure.”
The Dominion Post also asked how the Department of Health and Human Resources will track doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on its dashboard. The dashboard now combines data for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, listing first and second doses administered. But J&J’s is a single dose.
Amjad said the precise details on that would be up to Secretary Bill Crouch, who was not at the briefing, but she said that somehow they’ll fit a separate J&J box into the vaccine info.
TWEET David Beard@dbeardtdp
EMAIL dbeard@dominionpost.com
