West Virginia sees fifth coronavirus-related death; Justice urges caution
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CHARLESTON -- Gov. Jim Justice expressed sorrow Thursday for the fifth West Virginian to die from the coronavirus and told West Virginians to remain vigilant to limit the spread of the dangerous virus.
According to the Department of Health and Human Resources, the fifth confirmed coronavirus-related death was an 89-year-old woman from the Sundale Long-Term Care facility in Morgantown. No further information was released.
"It's now five too many," Justice said. "I want to urge everyone of you to keep this lady in keep this family in your thoughts and prayers...I just hate it, and this is a tough thing."
According to data released by DHHR Thursday morning, there were 485 confirmed coronavirus cases in West Virginia, an increase of two from DHHR's Wednesday evening numbers. DHHR is now updating coronavirus test numbers twice a day at coronavirus.wv.gov. Test results are reported by DHHR once county health departments inform DHHR and an investigation is performed.
As of Thursday morning, there were 12,934 total tests, an increase of only 75 tests since Wednesday afternoon. Justice said an increase of two positive cases might look good, but it was nothing to get excited about just yet.
"You could dance in the streets about that...but we can't get excited at all about two," Justice said. "I would not be skewed about the number of positives, because we just didn't get very many tests results in yesterday."
By Thursday afternoon, the DHHR coronavirus numbers increased by 38, from 485 to 523 with 13,863 total tests.
Justice said West Virginia's percentage of positive tests compared to total tests was still low at 3.8 percent while the national average 19 percent, which is also the lowest of any of West Virginia's surrounding states. The percentage of total tests compared to West Virginia's population was 7.2 percent while the national percentage 6.8 percent.
"We're trending higher on the number of tests taken," Justice said. "The only state around that we're not significantly higher than on the amount of tests taken is Pennsylvania...we're really taking a lot of tests and our positives are still really low."
Dr. Clay Marsh, the state coronavirus czar, said that most of those testing positive for the coronavirus, also called COVID-19, are recovering at home in self-quarantine versus being admitted to the hospital.
Data collected by epidemiologists with the West Virginia National Guard show that of the state's positive cases, 17 percent resulted in hospitalizations, with 5.9 percent patients in intensive care units with ventilators and 2.9 percent in ICU units with no ventilators, but 82 percent of those testing positive are in home isolation and another 15 percent have recovered. According to Marsh, the state mortality rate for COVID-19 is approaching 1 percent, while nationally the mortality rate is 3.4 percent and 5.5 percent worldwide.
"We know that we have done a lot of important things and our citizens have done a lot of important things to make sure we are doing the suppression strategies to reduce the virus spread," Marsh said. "Ultimately, by staying at home and staying physically distant from each other, we know we can reduce that spread, which is important."
According to modeling from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, West Virginia is six days away from peak resource usage on Wednesday, April 15. The IHME model predicts that West Virginia will have plenty of hospital beds and ICU beds to handle any surge of severe coronavirus cases as long as West Virginia continue to follow all social distancing guidelines.
Just in case, state and federal officials are working with the Thomas Health System to use St. Francis Hospital in Charleston as an alternative care facility for coronavirus overflow should it be needed. The facility as 95 beds available.
"We now have a whole government effort together," Justice said. "Everybody is all in on moving equipment and being prepared. I hope and pray we don't need it, but we are just trying to be prepared."
In other news, Justice signed an executive order Thursday order public and private golf courses to institute greater social distancing requirements. That same executive order also allows cities and towns to move their municipal elections to coincide with the new date for the primary election on Tuesday, June 9.
Steve Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com.