Justice, Hoyer warn cold weather, variants, flu threaten West Virginia hospitals
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CHARLESTON -- West Virginia officials are concerned the combination of colder temperatures, low vaccination and booster rates, the delta and omicron variants of COVID-19 and the flu will make this winter a difficult time for the state and its hospitals.
Hospitalizations and other statistics are already cause for concern, said James Hoyer, leader of the state's joint interagency task force for COVID-19 and vaccines.
"Any time we get above 60 daily admissions of COVID patients across our hospital systems, we know that's putting our hospitals in a detrimental position," he said during Gov. Jim Justice's online briefing Thursday. "Yesterday's (Wednesday's) number was 82."
Across West Virginia, there were 602 people hospitalized with complications from the virus Thursday, with 208 in intensive care units and 126 on ventilators.
The transmission rate of the virus is at 1.09 "and continues to trend up," Hoyer said. A value of more than 1 indicates the virus is rapidly spreading and serves as "a key indicator we watch that will then lead to additional challenges for us as a state," he said.
The task force continues to work with senior centers in the state and plan to add flu shots to events at those facilities, Hoyer said.
"We know those are critical to making sure that we are all as healthy as possible, particularly during what is going to be a challenging winter," he said.
Dr. Clay Marsh, the state's coronavirus czar, was unable to attend Thursday's briefing due to a prior engagement, but Justice said he received a message from him indicating that "as soon as the cold weather gets here, we're going to get into real trouble." With more people going inside and traveling for holiday gatherings, the more contagious variants of the virus could spread and tax the health care systems.
"The unfortunate circumstances are that those who are unvaccinated and those who don't get the booster dose are going to potentially prevent others from getting treatment and care because of the challenges that our hospitals will have," Hoyer said.
The task force will conduct a tabletop exercise next week at Justice's direction to explore strategies for dealing with another surge in infections and hospitalizations, Hoyer said. The primary concern is not bed space but availability of personnel, he said.
"There's a lot of things that we can do logistically, but … staffing is not an issue that's easy to fix with (the need for) qualified individuals," Hoyer said.
Justice was asked if the state would consider another round of the Saving Our Care initiative that earlier this year provided hospitals with financial assistance to support overtime, temporary staffing and retention bonuses.
"We absolutely stand on standby to do whatever we've got to do," he said. "We've got to maintain the strength of our hospitals."
Statistics from the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources show 45.1 percent of residents age 65 and older who are fully vaccinated have received booster doses, a figure which drops to 38.6 percent when the age is extended to 50 and older and 30.5 percent of those 18 and older.
"With all in me, I encourage you to move, move now, especially on these boosters," Justice said.
The governor reiterated that he believes the vaccine is the only way to combat the virus, but he does not support federal mandates.
"We've always known that there is a significant percentage of our people out there that are really, really unsure or dead set against taking the vaccine," Justice said. "Now, when all of the sudden, people all around are threatening them, like our federal government did and said if you don't get the vaccine, your employer is going to let you go, basically … they just made them more difficult, more difficult for us to get them across the finish line as far as the vaccine."
Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com.