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CHARLESTON -- The number of COVID-19 cases is dropping both nationally and in West Virginia, but deaths from the virus have yet to follow that trend, according to state officials.
Gov. Jim Justice on Thursday reported an additional 123 deaths in West Virginia from COVID since Monday, bringing the state's total to 6,146. Reconciliation figures are included in the most recent data.
"Nationally, we are in the midst of a reducing number of cases from the omicron variant of COVID 19 and a reduction in the number of hospitalizations, but we are not seeing a reduction in deaths at this point," said Dr. Clay Marsh, state COVID adviser and leader.
More than 3,000 people died on Wednesday of COVID-19 across America, he said.
"That is more than we saw die in the 9/11 tragedy," he said.
As the number of overall cases and hospitalizations decrease, the number of deaths likely will continue to rise "over the next two to three weeks," Marsh said. Many deaths from COVID can be prevented by being vaccinated and boosted, he said.
"We can look across our country at other countries that have comparable standards of living and economies for their people," he said. "The difference is we have vaccinated and boosted much fewer of our citizens than other countries have, and that has translated to our being well on our way to over 1 million deaths in this country and certainly over 6,100 in West Virginia."
Justice reported 753 people are in West Virginia hospitals due to COVID as of Thursday morning with 193 in an intensive care unit and 112 on ventilators.
More than 1 million residents have received COVID vaccinations, but Justice said Thursday just 403,886 residents in the state thus far have received their booster shots.
"That is nowhere close to the number we got to get," Justice said.
Dr. Ayne Amjad, state health officer, said a positive note about boosters in the state. She said 80.5% of those in long-term care facilities have now been boosted, ranking West Virginia 13th among the 50 states in that category, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
"For us, that's pretty dog gone good," Justice said.
The vendor that organizes the state's COVID dashboard each day had a power outage on Wednesday, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Bill Crouch also said. As a result, dashboard numbers on the website have not been updated as of Thursday morning.
Crouch said new numbers would be on the site as soon as possible.