Majority of W.Va. Students Remote This Week; All Panhandle Counties Red or Orange
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Forty-one of West Virginia's 55 counties will be on remote learning this week, according to Saturday's West Virginia Department of Education COVID-19 school re-entry map.
That list of remote learning counties includes many of the state's largest school districts, as Kanawha, Cabell, Monongalia, Berkeley and others will have students learning from home.
Only four counties — McDowell, Logan, Summers and Randolph — are green this week, with another seven in yellow and eight in gold.
Five of the yellow and gold counties have opted for remote learning instead of in-person instruction: Lewis, Mercer, Upshur, Marion and Taylor.
Locally, Ohio County is in orange this week, joined by Wetzel. The other four Northern Panhandle counties — Hancock, Brooke, Marshall and Tyler — are red.
For Marshall County, this marks week seven of remote learning, while it marks week six in Ohio County. Brooke and Hancock county students have been out of class for three consecutive weeks, while Wetzel is starting its third week of remote and Tyler, its fourth.
Winter break for Ohio County students begins Dec. 23. That means it's likely Ohio County students, for example, will have been on full remote learning for nearly eight full weeks to end the year.
On the Saturday West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources COVID-19 map, Marshall County was orange along with Ohio County, marking one of the few times in recent weeks that Marshall County has been out of the red. Hancock and Brooke are in the red on that map, with Hancock marking a second straight day with some of the state's worse numbers.
On a positive note, the first round of vaccinations for frontline healthcare workers are set to begin early this week, with Wheeling Hospital planning vaccinations as soon as the Pfizer vaccine reaches the region.