Health officials and others from Monongalia County and WVU delivered a coronavirus cautionary tale, tinged with optimism, to The Dominion Post Friday.
First, the optimism: By all accounts, it looks like a vaccine will be here sooner rather than later.
The cautionary: By all accounts, it looks like a vaccine will be here sooner rather than later.
Which means, Dr. Carmen Burrell told the newspaper’s editorial board, that people need to be more vigilant than ever — especially since the virus is raging across West Virginia and the rest of the U.S., in an upsurge of positive cases.
Burrell, who is the medical director of WVU Medicine Student Health and Urgent Care, said protocols translate to protection.
No matter, she said, if all that mask wearing and social distancing is turning into the itch that can’t be scratched.
“We know everyone is getting fatigued during the pandemic,” she said.
She was joined by county health officer Dr. Lee B. Smith and Rob Alsop, vice president of strategic initiatives at WVU, for an hour-long discussion looking at COVID-19 through lenses of the present and the near future, when the vaccine does land for the public.
Testing is the law of the land now, the trio said, and it will be the law of the land then.
By the time of the noon meeting Friday, in fact, Smith reported that 220 tests had been conducted by the county health department in a two-hour span. Smith is also executive director of that organization.
Same deal for this past Monday, he said, when 214 were tested in that same stretch, resulting in two positive cases.
WVU’s Student Recreation Center is the site of the testing done by the health department, and of course, the university, Alsop said.
“It’s a good, working relationship,” Alsop said of the two entities serving the entire dynamic of Morgantown, Mon County and WVU under one roof.
Testing for residents of Morgantown and Mon who don’t attend or work at WVU numbered 847 on the Friday before Thanksgiving, which Smith believes was the highest single-day for the department since the pandemic began.
The university has performed 52,000 tests for its students and staffers over the semester, including 1,700 on one day, Alsop and Burrell said.
Alsop said to expect “robust” testing for the spring semester, which begins
Jan. 21. That’s in anticipation of a possible roll-out of the vaccine in late March, he said, based on Gov. Jim Justice’s projections earlier.
Meanwhile, Mon County Schools reported another positive case in the district Friday, Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said.
