Justice: W.Va. on track to reopen mom and pop businesses, professional services
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CHARLESTON -- A day after he unveiled his comeback plan over the next six weeks, Gov. Jim Justice said Tuesday that the second week of his phase-in of business reopenings could start as soon as next Monday.
Justice made the announcement Tuesday during his daily coronavirus briefing from the Capitol in Charleston.
"We're going to keep you safe to the very best of all of our abilities," Justice said. "We're going to absolutely move forward to try to give you a life that is as close to where it used to be as we can possibly make it, and we're going to try to do that as quickly as we can with one word in mind: that is safety, safety, safety."
The first week of his "West Virginia Strong: The Comeback" plan kicked off Tuesday with hospitals being able to apply to the Department of Health and Human Resources to restart elective medical procedures provided they have enough personal protective equipment on hand and access to a ready supply.
Justice signed an executive order Monday allowing other outpatient health care providers, such as primary care, dentists, physical and occupational therapists, psychologists and mental health professionals, and other health care providers regulated by Chapter 30 of state code to reopen starting Thursday, April 30.
On Tuesday, Justice said as long as the percentage of positive coronavirus cases compared to total tests remains below 3 percent by 5 p.m. today,, the next phase of the reopening plan can commence starting Monday, May 4. Additional guidance is expected to be released in the coming days.
This would allow small businesses with less than 10 employees to reopen, outdoor dining and churches and houses of worship, though social distance requirements would remain in place. Professional services, such as hair and nail salons, barbers and dog groomers could also reopen, but those services would only be available by appointment and people would have to wait in their cars instead of inside the establishments.
Justice said he wanted to base his decisions on measurable data and information the public can understand.
"They really give us the ability to be able to measure and monitor, and you see it too," Justice said. "I trust that you're completely capable of doing amazing as we move forward provided you have the facts. You can't deal with something that's intangible that's just a wish or whatever may be. When you've got that number, you can look at every day and track it every day and you see that number trending in the wrong way, then you need to step and do all that you possibly can to help."
As of Tuesday morning, the number sat at 2.7 percent after 2,560 duplicate cases were removed from Monday night's total of 43,049. The national rate is 18 percent. Total tests as of Tuesday morning were 40,489 tests with 1,079 people testing positive. Of the 1,079, 561 cases were active, 37 people have died and 481 people recovered from COVID-19.
Dr. Clay Marsh, the state coronavirus czar, said the number of positive test cases have trended downward, despite spikes in cases due to infections at nursing homes, from a peak of 71 new cases on April 8, to 24 new cases as of Monday night.
Marsh said now the state was looking at the R0 factor – pronounced R-Naught – meaning how contagious an infectious disease is and how quickly it can spread. West Virginia's R0 factor is below 1, meaning that one person with COVID-19 is likely to infect no more than one other person.
"Ultimately, I felt that was a sign that we had this good window – along with the reduced rate of positivity as a percent of total tests over the last eight days – gave us that window," Marsh said. "We're continuing to expand our testing. We're continuing to expand our surveillance. Four our hospitals, we do still have our capacity at the ICU. We feel this is the right time to do that."
"There is no perfect formula here, but if we watch and we absolutely trace those numbers and we track them, we use a metric instead of just wild guesses, we're going to absolutely know when we have problem. And when we have a problem, we're going to run to the fire."