During his Wednesday, Feb. 17, coronavirus response media-briefing, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced that he will be meeting with the state’s pandemic response leadership team to evaluate possible improvements and refinements to the current COVID-19 plan.
According to a statement released by the governor’s office after the conclusion of Wednesday’s briefing, the meetings will take place between, “today and tomorrow to discuss the possibility of lifting certain restrictions related to schools and businesses across the state while maintaining a high level of safety for all West Virginians.”
“We continue to meet,” Justice said. “We’ve been in a bunch of discussions regarding some ideas to lessen restrictions on our businesses and on our schools so we can move forward. I think we can move in that direction now.”
This announcement comes as confirmed cases of COVID-19 have decreased in West Virginia for 32-consecutive days. Nearly 15% of the state’s population has received the initial dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. As of Wednesday morning, Feb. 17, 145,734 residents have been fully vaccinated against the virus, meaning they have received both of the two necessary doses.
Also during Wednesday’s briefing, it was announced that the DHHR’s “vaccine distribution dashboard” has been updated to provide vaccine data for individual counties.
“We’ve had a lot of requests for that information,” said Bill Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary. “The revisions to the dashboard also offers a breakdown of vaccine data by age, race and gender for each county.
“This is part of our commitment and the governor’s commitment to be transparent and to make sure that we provide information as quickly and in the best manner that we can.”
“I want to make sure people understand, we are focused on all of West Virginia,” Retired Gen. James Hoyer added. “But we know, based on what we have done in our strategy, we have almost a 70% reduction in deaths in this state over the first six-weeks of 2021. So we’ve got to continue to focus on that path.”
The West Virginia Daily News will provide updates regarding any changes made to the state’s current COVID-19 response, including adjustments to school or business restrictions, as additional details are made available.
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