CHARLESTON — Gov. Jim Justice repeatedly emphasized during Friday’s COVID-19 briefing that he has no intention — at this time — of implementing a statewide mask mandate, leaving the decision at the local level.
“I’m going to listen to the health experts and I’m going to make the very best decision I can possibly make,” Justice said in the briefing, streamed live on YouTube. “Today, I do not have the information in front of me to move on a mask mandate at all.
“If this thing turns terribly ugly, and the advice comes to me that we need to move that way, we’ll move that way,” he said.
Justice expressed frustration with the way his previous remarks on the subject had been reported by another media outlet. He said one reason West Virginia has had the level of success it has in fighting the coronavirus is because people have worked together.
If he mandated masks again at this point, “you’ll have all kinds of division happen immediately,” Justice said.
As the more infectious delta variant spreads around the country, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended people wear masks in indoor public spaces in areas of high or substantial spread, as determined by the agency’s COVID Data Tracker at covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view.
Dr. Clay Marsh, West Virginia’s coronavirus czar, said 91 percent of the new cases in the state are the delta variant. As of Friday’s update from the state Department of Health and Human Resources, there were 317 confirmed cases of the delta variant, but DHHR Secretary Bill Crouch noted it takes 10 days to two weeks to complete the sequencing needed to identify a particular variant.
“We’re still on the early side of what I believe is still going to be a really turbulent time coming up,” Marsh said.
Marsh said full vaccination for those who are eligible is the best protection because even though vaccinated individuals can still contract the virus, the risk of severe effects, hospitalization and death is greatly reduced. Wearing masks reduces the amount of droplets and concentration of the virus released into the air by those wearing them, he said.
Marsh noted that while outdoor activity remains safer than indoor activity for all forms of COVID, the delta variant has been documented to be more infectious than previous variants even outside.
The federal Food and Drug Administration announced late Thursday that transplant recipients and others with compromised immune systems can get a third dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Pending approval by CDC advisers, the state is preparing to deploy the additional shots, said James Hoyer, director of the Joint Interagency Task Force on Vaccines.
“We will have to provide a variety of outlets for people to get the vaccine, and we’re prepared to do that,” he said.
Crouch said some of the statistics posted on the state’s online COVID dashboard Friday may be off because of a recent update to the system, as well as the discovery of unreported cases in Berkeley and Morgan counties due to a technical error involving a testing vendor. He anticipates a better count being available Monday.
The state is also working to accurately track breakthrough infections affecting vaccinated individuals, Crouch said.
One additional COVID-19 death was reported Friday, a 62-year-old woman from Raleigh County.
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August 14, 2021 at 11:05AM
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Justice: No mask mandate now | News, Sports, Jobs - The Inter-Mountain
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