MORGANTOWN — Friday was a bad news-good news day at the governor’s COVID briefing.
The bad news was that the death toll reached 6,739, with Gov. Jim Justice announcing 88 deaths since his Monday briefing (47 of those being reconciliations of prior deaths just reaching the state database).
Commenting, Joint Interagency Task Force Director Gen. James Hoyer said that during World War II, more than 218,000 West Virginians served and 5,830 died. “Almost 1,000 more people have died from COVID in a shorter period of time.”
The good news: active cases stood at 460; the peak was 21,717 on Jan. 22. Only 171 were hospitalized, with 43 in ICUs and 26 on ventilators. The map showed every county green.
Justice said, “We pulled the rope together and now we’re all green. We’ve got to keep on walking and we’ve got to keep on trying to get everyone across the finish line.”
COVID-19 Czar Clay Marsh commented on the numbers, “That is certainly cause for celebration.”
But he tempered that with caution in light of the growing prevalence of the omicron BA.2 variant. BA.2 is now 35% of all U.S. cases, and a higher percentage of new cases, he said.
Research shows that the vaccine booster reduces the most severe complications in BA.2 cases, while in Denmark those who did not get a booster were more vulnerable to acquiring the variant.
“We do see there is a potential storm on the horizon,” he said, and now is the time to be vaccinated and boosted before the wave hits West Virginia.
TWEET David Beard @dbeardtdp
EMAIL dbeard@dominionpost.com
