MORGANTOWN – The West Virginia Osteopathic Medical Association has called on Gov. Jim Justice to immediately issue a statewide mask mandate.
The WVOMA sent a letter to Justice on Monday and announced it in a Tuesday release. Justice’s office did not respond to a request for comment sent Tuesday afternoon.
In the letter, Dr. Michael Robie, president of WVOMA and medical director of the Putnam County Health Department, calls on Justice to recognize the “increasingly difficult task” county health officers and physicians face in recommending established public health measures to contain the spread of the Delta Variant of COVID-19 “due to misinformation spread in our communities.”
The difficulty occurs even though new data supports masking, distancing, vaccination, quarantine, hygiene, ventilation and testing to contain and prevent COVID-19 outbreaks, he wrote.
The challenges providers face in containing the pandemic, he wrote, hamper achieving several goals: keeping children safely in school; maintaining the workforce; preventing overcapacity and substandard care in hospitals and clinics; reducing the financial burden on institutions; reducing disparities; and ensuring an educated and healthy workforce for the future
“For these reasons,” he wrote, “we request clear leadership from your office on these important public health measures without which we cannot achieve these goals. Specifically, we request imposing a mask mandate at the state level immediately.”
Dr. Catherine Feaga, an osteopathic physician in Jefferson County and member of the WVOMA board of trustees, said in the release that county health officers have the experience, skills and commitment to their communities to help keep people safe and children safely in school, but they can’t do it alone.
“We have to be willing to listen and to trust,” she said. “That’s one thing West Virginians are most known for – our strong community ties. We know to trust and love our neighbor, even when social and TV media might be telling us not to. We can stand as communities together to keep our kids in school and our loved ones healthy.”
Feaga said such community building takes state-level leadership with courage and creativity to address the division in society and get to a higher place.
“We ask the governor to fill those big shoes,” she said, “and bring us together as a state to fight this together. We have so much to be proud of, and to let some virus tear us apart because we’re not listening to the folks who have the training and expertise to take us through this is a crying shame. That’s why we respectfully ask the governor to step up, support our county public health officers and set some real state-level guidance on beating this together.”
Justice has repeatedly opposed a statewide mask mandate, saying during his COVID briefings it will cause unnecessary division. He has chosen to rely on local control – school boards for school mask mandates, for instance.
Tweet David Beard @dbeardtdp Email dbeard@dominionpost.com
