Local health officials said while the state of West Virginia is in a better place now regarding the COVID-19 pandemic than it was at the beginning of the year, residents should still be cautious, especially concerning emerging variants.
Vaccines come to West Virginia
Dr. Clay Marsh, vice president and executive dean for Health Sciences at West Virginia University and coronavirus czar for the state of West Virginia, said in January the state was still experiencing a rise in COVID-19 cases and was just beginning to distribute COVID-19 vaccines.
At that time, the vaccine distribution was targeted at the state’s critical workforce – hospital employees, healthcare workers, emergency and first responders and community infrastructure employees.
The elderly population was also targeted, especially those in assisted living facilities. By the end of January, West Virginia was the first state to finish administering first and second vaccine doses to all assisted living facility residents and staff. Then, the state pivoted to address the 70-year-old and older population, which made up 77.5% of the state’s COVID-19 deaths.
“We had much less vaccine than we had demand for people who wanted the vaccine at that point, and we were still seeing cases of COVID-19 on the rise and particularly prevalent in some of the middle-aged part of our population,” Marsh said.
Also at that time, the state was still seeing a substantial number of people being hospitalized and dying because of COVID-19 – who were often older with preexisting medical conditions.
Where is the state now?
Today, the state is seeing the real impact of vaccines, said Marsh. The state has been able to vaccinate about 62% of its eligible population, with 51% fully vaccinated.
“We have been, I think, really effective at targeting the people that are the most vulnerable with vaccines. But we also know that many people now have become more hesitant to the vaccine distribution and vaccinations have slowed in West Virginia,” he said.
He said as we start to look at the future, we have plenty of vaccine available, but now need to focus on helping people feel safe in getting a vaccine and helping them understand the importance of taking a vaccine for their own health and for the health of those they connect with.
Around the world, the places that have not been able to access the COVID-19 vaccine are those still very much struggling with the pandemic, Marsh said. Meanwhile, the rate of COVID-19 spread in the U.S. is the lowest the country has seen since the beginning of the pandemic.
While West Virginia’s status looks promising, we must still be cautious because of mutations occurring to the virus in areas where vaccines are not available to battle the pandemic. This results in the development of COVID-19 variants, or forms of the virus that have the ability to either infect people more easily, evade the immune system better or cause more severe complications from infection, officials have said.
Delta danger
One of the most pressing variants at this time is the Delta variant, which originated in India. Marsh said this variant is more infectious and leads to more severe disease than any other COVID-19 viral variant we’ve seen so far. This variant makes up about 10% of current cases in the United States.
“So, in the next two to four weeks, it will be the most common form of COVID-19 in the United States – it already is in the world. Although we’ve only seen three cases of that variant in West Virginia, and we haven’t seen any new Delta variants, which is great, we know it will only be a matter of time before it [really] comes to West Virginia as well,” Marsh said.
The Delta variant seems to have a strong capability to infect and make sick even healthy, younger people who are either not vaccinated or not fully vaccinated. Individuals who have finished two doses of the Pfizer vaccine and are two weeks out from their last dose have a 79% protection rate against contracting the Delta variant and are protected against severe complications and hospitalization at a 96% rate.
Marsh credited Gov. Jim Justice for his focus on trying to keep as much of the state’s business community intact as possible while responding to the pandemic, protecting the health and safety of West Virginians and trying to keep things moving in the right direction.
He said with the executive order that mandated masks being removed today, individuals should review Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines to determine what is the best course of action for them.
Marsh said fully vaccinated individuals are safe to take off their masks outside but should take it upon themselves to decide whether they will continue to wear a mask indoors or in mixed company of vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
“The way that we’ll get back to our more normal life that we experienced pre-COVID … is really going to be directly related to the percent of our population that is fully vaccinated,” Marsh said.
As long as we have a decent number of our state’s vaccine-eligible or total population that is not vaccinated or only partially vaccinated, they are still at risk of getting infected and spreading variant viruses, which will continue to mutate as they spread from person to person.
“We’re probably going to be in a bit of a dance with new variants coming back and forth to the U.S. and circulating around the world until we get the rest of the world vaccinated for COVID-19 or until there’s a combination of enough people vaccinated and enough people that have developed natural immunity … that we stop and slow down the spread of it,” he said.
“I think we’re still going to have to navigate COVID for a while.”
Local improvements
Monongalia County Health Department’s regional epidemiologist, Dr. Diane Gross, provided a general timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the region.
She said the pandemic initially hit Monongalia County last spring. The county experienced a peak in new cases in mid-December through early January. During that time, the county was seeing roughly 80 new cases per day.
The rate of new cases per day has been decreasing since then.
Now, the county is in about the same place in terms of cases as it was this time last year, she said. The county is now seeing an average of two to three new cases per day.
“We’re in a much better place,” Gross said when comparing the county’s current new case rate to the one experienced late last summer through winter.
However, Gross said we can’t become complacent, especially since the county experienced a sharp increase in cases last July. While the county is less likely to see such a steep rise this July, the county’s 45.3% fully vaccinated rate still leaves people at risk.
“[You] still need to maintain diligence, especially if [you’re] not vaccinated,” she said.
Gross said there is also a concern that we will never fully be rid of COVID-19 but will have to deal with it on a flu-like basis. Influenza viruses and other coronaviruses have demonstrated seasonal patterns, which we should be on the lookout for with COVID-19.
Additionally, there has been a change in who is getting infected with COVID-19 most frequently. In 2020, young adults held that position. Now, individuals around the ages of 40 and 50 are contracting the virus more often.
The county has seen a decline in deaths attributed to COVID-19. In the first two weeks of January, the county reported 22 deaths; two were reported in the first two weeks of June.
There has also been a decline in the number of people getting tested for COVID-19, especially since school is out and children are no longer attending or participating in activities that require them to be tested frequently.
Gross said because of this, we might be missing the opportunity to diagnose asymptomatic infections.
Monongalia County still offers free COVID-19 testing in collaboration with WVU. Testing is from 9 a.m. to noon each Monday and Friday at the WVU Rec Center.
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