by Nicole Wilson-Carr and Marly Hazen Ynigues
It’s been six months since West Virginia shined on national news for our exemplary early vaccination rate. As NPR reported, if West Virginia’s COVID-19 vaccination rate were compared with those of other countries, the Mountain State had the third highest percentage of fully vaccinated population.
For those familiar with West Virginia history, this early success was perhaps unsurprising. We’re the only state to have never had vaccination exemptions except under medical necessity. (Mississippi, often touted as having similarly high standards, permitted religious exemptions from 1960-79, according to “A Tale of Two States: Mississippi, West Virginia, and Exemptions to Compulsory School Vaccination Laws,” in the peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs.)
In 2019, the nonprofit news outlet 100 Days in Appalachia published “Vaccination Laws: What the Rest of the U.S. Can Learn from Appalachia,” noting that West Virginia’s vaccination laws were created in 1872, less than a decade after our state’s founding. At our core, West Virginians care about our neighbors and doing what’s decent to protect our communities.
In 2018, 98.4% of West Virginians had taken the MMR vaccine before kindergarten, surpassing the 90-95% measles vaccination rate necessary for community immunity. According to the West Virginia Office of Epidemiology and Prevention Services, using data through 2018, we’ve had no cases of measles since 2009, despite outbreaks in other states. We’ve had no cases of rubella since 1992, or diphtheria since 1976, or polio since 1970. In 2014-15, only 0.2% of West Virginia kindergarten students received medical exemptions; we had the fourth highest vaccination rate in the country.
In December 2020, before coronavirus vaccines became widely available, West Virginia faced a surge of cases caused primarily by the original virus and Alpha variant. We’re now facing a much more transmissible, much more deadly variant — and inadequate community vaccination rates. West Virginia is again experiencing an uptick in hospitalization.
The Delta variant is twice as transmissible as the original virus. One individual with Delta can infect five to eight people, according to West Virginia COVID-19 Czar Dr. Clay Marsh. It creates 1,200 times the viral load and is strongly associated with increased severity of illness, hospitalization and death among those who are unvaccinated.
The New York Times reported this week that “216 children with COVID were being hospitalized every day, on average, nearly matching the 217 daily admissions during the pandemic’s peak in early January.” Without more community vaccination, these numbers will doubtless rise as the school year begins.
Only 50% of the total U.S. population is fully vaccinated. At one time, researchers hypothesized that community immunity could be achieved if 70% of the population were fully vaccinated, but due in part to Delta’s high transmissibility, the data now suggest 80%. Per the Infectious Disease Society of America, the goal may approach 90% — the rate we surpass to prevent measles outbreaks.
Some mistakenly believe that eating healthy and taking supplements prevents coronavirus infection, but that thought process leads to the needless deaths of many, including our elders and children. The virus does not discriminate. West Virginia’s first reported death from COVID-19 was an 84-year-old Black woman named Ms. Viola York Horton from Marion County; our youngest death was a 17-year-old boy from Kanawha County.
Vaccination is our strongest shield to protect our communities, and masking adds an additional layer to reinforce this protection.
Our state has historically taken action against the dangers of infectious disease. In 1905, we enacted a vaccine mandate due to smallpox’s devastation on West Virginia communities. We’re now fortunate to have safe, effective vaccines against the coronavirus and the wisdom of over a century of successful community vaccinations. But so far, our total vaccination rate ranks 43rd among all 50 states.
It’s time for West Virginians to fulfill our gutsy legacy as leaders in vaccination. Our fearless commitment to community is a history worth preserving through our actions today.
Nicole Wilson-Carr and Marly Hazen Ynigues are members of the Morgantown/Kingwood Branch of the NAACP, as health chair and communications chair, respectively.
