West Virginia Gov. Justice: 'Numbers show maybe we are at the peak,' but hospitalizations at 1,000 for first time

"Our numbers show maybe we are at the peak and we have started to decline," Gov. Jim Justice said. "... For the first time ever, we have 1,000 people in the hospital in West Virginia, with 280 people that are patients in the ICU units, that's down just a little bit, and we're back to 168 people that are on ventilators."

And Justice added that even if the state is at the peak of the latest surge, "it's surely still with us." And it might be a false summit, too, Justice said.

Dr. Clay Marsh, state COVID-19 czar, said "it looks like that we've sort of plateaued, perhaps, at the top for a bit, and we hope that is the start of us seeing a more rapid drop. But we have continued and will expect to continue to see more people in our hospitals and more people who need critical care services" such as ventilators.

Also Wednesday, Justice and James Hoyer, head of the state's vaccination effort, said the state's vaccination numbers had been inflated by incorrect CDC contractor data.

"They have been double counting the numbers that they send us related to the federal pharmacy plan, so it has made a significant impact on all our numbers," Justice said.

By subtracting the duplicates, the state's vaccine rate tumbled from 74% to of the eligible-age population with at least one dose, to just 63.7%, according to Hoyer. And, the fully vaccinated percentage fell to 55.9%.

"There's no excuse, in my opinion, for the CDC to screw this up," Justice said. "There's no excuse. But at the same time, the way I look at it, there's no excuse from the standpoint of our people not knowing. My lord, we've got to know — we've got to know. ... Now what do we do now? We know where the real issue is. The real issue is we've been sitting back thinking we're at 74%. We're not. And so we've got to do something about it. Don't wait. In West Virginia now we know and we can really step up, we still have a bunch of people out there who absolutely we can get shot in arms."

A total of 26 new deaths were reported by the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources Wednesday, pushing the total to 3,467. The cumulative percent positivity was at 5.73% after the latest daily report of 11.45%.

There were 90 school outbreaks in 33 counties. The total of schoolchildren with confirmed cases was 921, the governor said. All but one county school system has a mask mandate, Justice said. He pointed out the potential for asymptomatic children to spread the disease without knowing they've been infected. 

Justice began his briefing by relating a conversation he had with the head of John Hopkins' infectious disease response. That doctor said that without a much higher percentage of Americans getting vaccinated, "we're not going to get there, and we're going to have more and more and more people die," Justice said.

The governor also made it clear that he has no plans to impose a mask mandate or any mandates involving gathering size limits. It's up to state residents to decide what's safe for them to do, he implied.

"There's risk everywhere. There's risk in everything that we do. We all need to assess that risk ourselves and then decide what to do," Justice said.

He indicated that state residents who might be at risk of serious illness from COVID-19 due to underlying conditions carefully consider before going into areas with large crowds.

Meanwhile, Marsh spoke briefly about the federal review process on booster shots. Marsh also said that it's possible a vaccine could be approved for emergency use among children ages 5-11 by the end of October.

Marsh also seemed to downplay putting too much stock in a report that COVID might not have a significant winter surge.

"COVID-19 is really getting more fit all the time. And it is on us to match its fitness and be ready for whatever COVID-19 brings to us," Marsh said.