MORGANTOWN — Monongalia County’s youngest students begin rolling up their sleeves Nov. 17 for the COVID vaccine.
Mountainview Elementary School is first in line for the county’s students aged 5-11.
The doses will be given there from 8:45-10 a.m., school officials said. After that, it’s on to Brookhaven Elementary, for rounds that will administered from 10:30-11:30 a.m., Deputy Schools Superintendent Donna Talerico said.
Ridgedale Elementary and Cheat Lake Elementary are on the afternoon schedule, with clinics from noon-1 p.m. and 1:30-3 p.m., respectively, she added.
Other clinics Nov. 18-19 will take in the county’s six other elementary schools.
Getting shots in arms, the deputy superintendent said, means getting back to what is now rarified air: Life without pandemic protocols and pandemic anxiety.
“We want to get back to ‘normal,'” she said previously. “Whatever that is right now.”
What that is right now, is what the coronavirus wants it to be.
To date, 4,676 residents across the state have died from it, according to numbers culled from the state Department of Health and Human Resources.
Monongalia County and most of the state were awash in orange on the DHHR alert map, with just five counties showing green — the best, safest hue on the map regarding life and the contagion.
A total of 11 counties were sitting in red on the map, which is the worst COVID color.
In the meantime, the actions of Mon’s district are still being colored by what’s on that map. With numbers trending down, the masks are still being mandated in schools here.
“We know the protocols are working,” Talerico said last week.
That was as the district was closing the week which saw 41 additional students testing positive for the virus, along with three other staffers.
Another 105 students went into quarantine from contact tracing, but no employees had to this time.
Across West Virginia, elementary and middle schools are still experiencing outbreak cases, most “related to extracurricular activities,” the state Department of Education said.
That includes the 13 at Mill Creek Intermediate in Berkeley County and the 24 positive diagnoses at Sissonville Middle, in Kanawha.
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