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CHARLESTON -- West Virginia started off the week Monday with bad news: a spike in COVID-19 deaths, technical issues with the dashboard used to monitor coronavirus cases, and parents upset with the most recent County Alert System map.
"Today is going to be a terrible day," said Gov. Jim Justice at the start of Monday's COVID-19 briefing from the State Capitol Building.
According to Justice, the Department of Health and Human Resources reported 17 additional deaths since Justice's Friday briefing. Justice also said 27 deaths have been investigated by DHHR since the start of the pandemic in the state in March. These deaths have since been labeled confirmed or probable COVID-19 deaths, bringing the new total of deaths to 530.
"You just heard me read 44 great West Virginians that we lost … 17 since Friday," Justice said. "Who knows what the report will show this morning, but it would surely add to the 17."
Dr. Ayne Amjad, the state health officer and commissioner for DHHR's Bureau of Public Health, explained that the discrepancy was due to how some hospitals and nursing homes were reporting deaths to DHHR.
State health officials only found out once the death certificates came back, which takes time. She said DHHR was reviewing these procedures and working with the facilities to remind them of the proper procedure for reporting deaths.
"When someone does have COVID-19 and they pass away in a hospital or a nursing home, there is a form to fill out called a death report," Amjad said. "If that death report is not filled out, then we don't know about it … unfortunately these we came across came through our Vital Statistics data and they were reviewing some data. Most of these passed away at the hospital level or at the nursing home level. These entities did not fill out the reporting forms, which did not get to the health department level."
The DHHR daily Coronavirus Dashboard did not update until 5:30 p.m. Monday. Justice said earlier that day that the dashboard was having technical difficulties. It normally updates at 10 a.m. daily. When it finally did update, it showed 28,805 total cases, 6,974 active cases, 854,290 confirmatory lab tests, 530 deaths and a 3.06% cumulative percent positivity.
The issues with the Coronavirus Dashboard followed on the heels of a nearly seven-hour delay Saturday night for the weekly County Alert System map posted on the Department of Education's website. The map's colors determine what schools can re-open for in-person school. Counties in the orange and red may close for in-person learning due to either the number of cases in the county or the percent of positive cases compared to testing.
The Department of Education map is updated every Saturday at 5 p.m., but the COVID-19 Data Review Panel – a group of state and university public health experts that verify the latest coronavirus data before assigning a county a color – didn't sign off on the weekly map until 11:17 p.m. Saturday. The Twitter account for the Governor's Office attributed the delay to "further verification of data."
With some high schools in counties selected to participate in football playoffs Saturday night, Justice said he had the Data Review Panel take another look at the numbers. Counties in the orange and red would not be able to participate in the playoff brackets until the cases come down or the number of tests increase.
Justice said the best way for counties to get out of the orange and red categories is to turn out for free drive-thru COVID-19 testing events. These events are updated daily at coronavirus.wv.gov.
Health officials said the more people test, the more quickly health experts can identify asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic people in order to isolate them and prevent further spread in communities, which would also bring down the infection rates that also determine county map colors.
"Sports are important … but school is more important," Justice said. "Surely to goodness if we can't go to school, then we don't need to be playing. In addition to all of that, what is way more important than anything is to try to find a way to keep these people from dying."