We’re staying at home, socially distancing, and dealing with closed school buildings, restaurants, and other non-essential businesses like salons and barbers, retail stores, and health clubs.
But guts have grown, and hair has greyed, and while most people realize the need for the precautions, impatience is prevalent despite more than 100 positives recorded in the Upper Ohio Valley, including 24 in Ohio County alone.
“When you have orders like we do now, life can get old pretty quickly because we’re used to going about things much differently,” said Howard Gamble, administrator of the Ohio County Health Department. “This has changed our daily lives for sure, and we still have some time to go.
“It’s all about the numbers, and right now we are monitoring 23 active cases in Ohio County, and unfortunately, we have had a fatality due to the virus,” he reported. “We have seen positive signs here and across the state of West Virginia, but until the time arrives when we are not seeing cases reported for days and then weeks, we’ll be in the situation we’re in now for a while longer.”
School Buildings Closed, Online Learning, Food Continues
W.Va. Gov. Jim Justice officially announced Tuesday afternoon that students in the state would not return to formal classrooms, but computer-based studies and food distribution would continue until the end of the state’s public-school academic calendar.
The governor also urged school districts to develop plans for high school graduations for this summer, but Howard is not completely confident the Class of 2020 will be the last to be impacted by the coronavirus.
“As far as the schools are concerned, when this first started a while ago, the concern in public health was that if the children did go back to school, they would be in a large setting,” he explained. “There would have been a lot of people gathering, including children and adults, and without a pharmasecutical treatment or a vaccine that many people in the same place would not have been a good situation.
“If we still do not have a drop in the numbers to the point where this disease is manageable, and if we still don’t have the treatments or the vaccine, it’s going to be very difficult to send that many people back into a large setting,” Howard said. “Everyone knows that when the kids go back to school, there are a lot more germs that are going into our households, and there’s a lot of illness during that time of year. With this virus, I expect a treatment before a vaccine, but there’s a lot left to learn before we can get back to normal.”
A COVID-19 Season?
The Ohio County Health Department offers flu shots each and every year to help local residents stoke their immunity systems to fight the annual influenza strains, so could this novel coronavirus create a new need in our new normal?
“There some viruses we see arrive at a certain time of year. Could this actually have a seasonal pattern? If so, I believe it will be short-term, but that’s yet to be seen. As far as a season of it, I don’t think so,” Howard said. “We have not seen such a season with other coronaviruses coming back seasonally, and we don’t see it with some of the other diseases like hepatitis or yellow fever.
“It is possible that we could see additional cases next year, but we are hoping that there are those treatments or a vaccine before that could take place,” he continued. “If those things are developed, then controlling this disease becomes a whole lot easier. But in the beginning of this, we didn’t know much and didn’t know what to expect.”
For now, testing will continue.
“In the very beginning of this, testing was an issue, and to be able to get people tested caused some problems,” Howard recalled. “Thankfully, Wheeling Hospital stepped up very quickly with the large testing site that we have. But there are two important things to consider when it comes to testing.
“One is the availability of the supplies you need to test,” he said. “We still have issues involving the test kits and those supplies, and what manpower we have to continue the testing. At the off-site at Wheeling Park, that staff continues to test between 40-90 people during the six days when the testing is taking place. But, right now, we have what we need to continue.”
