To view Gov. Justice’s full plan for The Comeback, visit: governor.wv.gov/The-Comeback
MORGANTOWN — May 21 will see a host of businesses reopening, Gov. Jim Justice announced during his Monday press briefing.
Week 4 officially begin May 18, but Justice said they chose to delay actual Week 4 for a few days to allow businesses more time, and it falls closer to Memorial Day weekend. As always, reopening is optional, not mandatory.
Indoor dining will be allowed to resume, but dining areas will only be allowed to fill to 50% capacity.
Large/specialty retail stores will be allowed to reopen. This will apply to standalone stores, strip mall and mall anchor stores with exterior entrances. The malls themselves and their interior stores are not included.
State park campgrounds will reopen to in-state residents on May 21; park cabins and lodges will open to in-state residents May 26.
Also on May 21, outdoor recreation rentals will resume (such as kayaks, bicycles, boats, rafts, canoes and ATVs) and outdoor motor sport and power sport racing will resume, but with no spectators. The 14-day self-quarantine for out-of-state travelers will also end that day.
This Friday, May 15, guided fishing trips will be allowed to resume. Trips will be limited to two anglers and one guide per boat.
All the social distancing, mask-wearing and hand-washing and no face-touching guidance remains in place. “The governor, his experts, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can tell you, and if you don’t do it, we’re going to slip back. … As long as you continue to just do just what you’ve already done, we’ll be Ok and we’ll just keep pumping out good numbers.”
Justice said he and his experts remain reluctant to resume whitewater rafting, although they understand the importance of the industry. Rafting means people crowding into buses and into the rafts, in close quarters. “All of that really concerns our medical people.” So they will move forward when they have a better safety handle on it.
Justice had previously said they’d hoped to resume youth sports on June 1, but they’ve delayed it to June 8. He primarily has in mind, he said, baseball and other low-contact sports. High-contact sports such as football and basketball will not be included in that order.
Asked if he’s concerned about a possible spike after May 21, Justice said, “I’m going to stay concerned every day. The numbers all tell us we can do this. … We’ll watch it and watch it every single day.”
Monday was the start of Week 3, with wellness centers – gyms and fitness centers supervised by licensed professionals – and drive-in movie theaters allowed to reopen.
Bureau of Public Health Commissioner Cathy Slemp said that the Department of Health and Human Resources added testing data for the 123 nursing homes to the DHHR’s coronavirus website – coronavirus.wv.gov – on Saturday. The figures aren’t complete yet, but she said 70% of the facilities had no identified cases.
On that topic, Justice said he learned in a conference call with Vice President Pence and other governors that all the other states aim to test all nursing homes in the next two weeks “
I felt like saying, ‘Duh.’ … That’s what we’ve tried to do: stay ahead of the curve.”
Monday afternoon’s COVID-19 number from the DHHR were 1,369 positive cases out of 64,165 test results – a 2.13% cumulative rate – with 57 deaths, including a 25-year-old woman from Berkeley County. Justice pointed out that the positive growth rated had dropped to .4%. The comparative number of recovered cases to active cases was 800 to 521.
He mourned, as always, the deaths, but touted again the state’s good overall performance compared to the nation. “We’ve just absolutely knocked it out of the park.”
The Dominion Post asked again about expanded testing. COVID-19 Czar Clay Marsh said Friday that West Virginia wants to be more specific in its testing moving forward, looking at congregate populations where the spread would be more likely, and areas with COVID-19 activity, monitoring downward trends and local spikes.
They want to take individual tests in countries, he said Friday, and derive county-level R0 levels – the measurement of how many people a single infected person may infect. Below 1 is good.
Slemp elaborated on that on Monday. They want to expand testing to anyone with symptoms, she said, and testing asymptomatic people, primarily first people in congregate care and high-risk settings, such as the African-American communities. Asymptomatic testing can be done via representative sampling.
“We are doing that as a start. We think that there are others that will follow. We are trying to build in more systematic ways in doing this surveillance on an ongoing basis.”
Marsh expanded on that, saying that of the 33 states reporting nursing home data, 14 have more than half of their deaths in nursing homes. Congregate areas in other states that have proven vulnerable to rapid spread include meat packing plants and corrections facilities.
“I think we definitely are committed to looking at some of these areas that we know give us the highest likelihood of rapid spread,” he said. And they want to test asymptomatic people in areas with more COVID-19 activity or that are adjacent to high activity, such as the Eastern Panhadle that borders the D.C.-Baltimore metro area.
“We want to start biopsying those place relatively consistently so that we start to understand what is the incidence of spread.”
Tweet David Beard @dbeardtdp Email dbeard@dominionpost.com
