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CHARLESTON -- Health and safety will be the prime considerations before allowing people to go back to work and students back to school after the brunt of the pandemic passes, according to the governor on Wednesday.
The return to normality was called the second phase of the state's plan to contain and prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus at Gov. Jim Justice's daily update and briefing on the pandemic and the state's response to it.
Hopefully the number of infections continues to trend downward, the governor said. Also, the decision will be based on the advice on the experts with the consideration being health and safety, Justice said.
The worst thing to do is to cause a relapse of the pandemic, he said. But day-to-day life won't immediately be the same as before the pandemic, according to Justice.
"We don't want to rush right back out and do things that are going to cause us to have a relapse that would be much greater than what we contended with the first go round," Justice said. "So as we do that, there's lots and lots of contingencies that are already in the works on how we're going to be able to go about doing this."
An issue in the recovery is the data and its accuracy, Dr. Clay Marsh, the state coronavirus czar, said. The goal is to provide accurate and timely information from the different sources, he said.
An outbreak in a single area would be treated and considered differently than an outbreak that is more widespread, Marsh said.
The approach into the second phase will be different, he said. Likening it to using a hammer in the first phases, the next approach will be like a scalpel and more specifically targeted, according to Marsh.
"As we come back out again, we need to become much more like a scalpel than like a hammer," Marsh said. "Ultimately we need to have the ability as the governor said to test very broadly. We need to think abundantly and create the resources to enable that."
Things have gotten better and more people are going to talk about getting back to work, Justice said.
"I absolutely want us to go back to work," he said.
Justice said his job is to protect people. Until it's safe, "I'm going to do my job," he said.
Among other reports, Maj. Gen. James Hoyer of the West Virginia National Guard said 602 guardsmen were on duty and completed 388 missions. The guard is working with a Ravenswood company and with an intubation box to protect health care workers designed through West Virginia University, he said.
More than 130,000 claims for unemployment have been filed, Justice said. With the help of guardsmen, the state should catch up by the end of next week, he said.
"We're catching up, we're catching up really fast," Justice said.
Justice urged businesses to take advantage of the Paycheck Protection Program that was in the coronavirus recovery package adopted by Congress. More than 5,200 small businesses in West Virginia have applied for loans through the Payroll Protection Program, representing about $1.054 billion, Justice said.
The state Department of Health and Human Resources has reported 10 people have died from the virus in West Virginia. The latest was a 62-year-old man in Marion County, Justice said.
Jess Mancini can be reached at jmancini@newsandsentinel.com