MORGANTOWN — West Virginia’s active COVID cases soared over the weekend, climbing from 3,372 Friday to 4,010 Monday morning.
That figure doesn’t tell the whole story because that’s a difference of 638; but the Department of Health and Human Resources said on its dashboard on Monday there were 1,037 new cases reported since Friday — meaning some of the older active cases were cleared as recovered.
The important figure is the new cases — 1,037 — and the talk at Monday’s COVID briefing was again the Delta variant.
Gov. Jim Justice held up a USA Today newspaper that showed a national COVID map colored mostly red, including the states all around West Virginia. He echoed the article’s point: This is a fourth surge that could have been prevented.
And we’re facing schools reopening, state and county fair season, fall sports, he said. “You’re taking a hell of a risk if you’re not vaccinated. … Do you not think this thing is not going to rear its ugly head even more so than it is now?”
Hospitalizations were down to 52 on July 4. Now they’re at 269, with 101 of those in ICU beds and 45 on ventilators.
COVID-19 Czar Clay Marsh said the nation has seen a nine-fold increase in average daily cases in less than a month. The U.S. has seen about 107,000 new cases per day in the last seven days.
And in the past week, there’s been an 84% increase in the number of children and infants in hospitals in the past week.
But Justice said he and his team are still not ready to impose mask mandates, or vaccine mandates. Or quarantine mandates for people traveling back from red states. There are so many red states he doesn’t see how a mandatory quarantine could work.
“The only thing that makes good sense out of this is just get yourself vaccinated,” he said.
TWEET David Beard @dbeardtdp EMAIL dbeard@dominionpost.com
