West Virginia significantly expanded priority lists for COVID-19 vaccinations Wednesday as the number of vaccine doses being delivered to the state continues to increase.
Those now eligible to receive the vaccine include members of the general public age 50 and over, school and higher education employees age 40 and over, as well as people age 16 and over with developmental disabilities, chronic medical conditions and women who are pregnant.
“It’s very exciting to be able to reduce the age for the general population to 50 years old,” Dr. Clay Marsh, vice president for health sciences at West Virginia University and the state’s COVID-19 czar, said in making the announcement during Wednesday’s COVID-19 briefing.
James Hoyer, the COVID-19 interagency task force director, said the state has been averaging about 60,000 doses a week of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. He said that number is expected to be near 100,000 this week, including the first doses of the newly authorized Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
“The good news is, that number will fluctuate up,” Hoyer said.
He said previously that West Virginia has the capacity to administer 125,000 doses a week but had been receiving less than half that amount.
In showing the effectiveness of the vaccines, Marsh cited an 85% decline in weekly COVID-19 deaths in the state since the vaccinations began. The number of deaths has dropped from 182 the final week of December to 25 last week.
Marsh credited that to the state’s targeted approach to vaccinations, beginning with nursing home residents and staff, health care professionals and first responders, and West Virginians age 65 and older.
He said the latter population is particularly vulnerable, with people age 60 and older accounting for 92% of all state COVID-19 deaths.
Department of Health and Human Resources Secretary Bill Crouch noted that COVID-19 outbreaks at nursing homes have dropped from 57 in December to four in February.
Crouch cited a recent outbreak at an unnamed nursing home, where all residents had been vaccinated. He said no residents became ill, and the seven staff members who tested positive all declined to be vaccinated.
President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that the United States will have enough COVID-19 vaccines for all adults by the end of May. He also called on states to prioritize vaccinating teachers and school personnel, with the goal of administering at least one dose to every teacher and staffer by the end of this month.
Hoyer was noncommittal on that goal Wednesday, citing the announcement adding teachers and school service personnel between ages 40 and 50 to the vaccine priority list, and the need to continue to target the highest-risk populations.
“As the bulk of the doses come in,” he said, “we will continue to work with not just teachers, but we’ve got a number of essential workers across the state who are in the same situation.”
He said the interagency task force is working with senior centers across the state to contact about 11,000 residents age 65 and older who had registered for vaccinations, but appear to have not gotten their shots.
Hoyer said that, in some cases, that might be the result of clerical error, with people who ended up on more than one priority list.
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