West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice and state officials want some counties in the state to go for gold, the color that is.
At a news conference Tuesday, the governor and state officials announced they have created a new color designation – gold – on the county alert system map that is between yellow and orange.
The new gold color will be assigned when counties have 10 to 14.9 coronavirus cases per 100,000 population or a positivity rate of 5% or less. Schools in counties listed in gold in Saturday’s update of the map and data will be allowed to have in-person classes and play in sports competitions if they play against inner-county competition or schools in counties also in gold.
Under the new system, 3 or fewer cases or 3% or less positivity rate will be green; 3.1 to 9.9 or 4% or less positivity rate yellow; 10 to 14.9 or 5% or less positivity rate gold; 15 to 24.9 orange; and 25 and above red.
“If you just think about it, if you were a county with a 11 and you were in the orange color code from 10 to 25 how can that county be looked at the same way as a county at 22?” Justice said. “The difference is so dramatic we needed to change.”
West Virginia School Superintendent W. Clayton Burch said there will be strict protocols for counties that are in gold when they attend in-person classes. He said masks will be required for students in grades three through 12. He said they will be working on reducing any large gatherings such as assemblies, and there will be limits on movements and transactions.
The superintendent said the school system will be monitoring its supply of face coverings and sanitation and will be working with the state Department of Health and Human Resources for support.
Burch said they will be going back and redoing the county alert map that was released last Saturday that determined how schools will be handled, and a new map will be released this Saturday. Officials said there have been 67,000 students in the state missing in-person classes, and they want to get more students at schools if they can do so safely. He noted that surveys have shown 75% of parents want their kids to attend in-person classes.
"For me as a state superintendent, what is most important is how do we get more children in school? We knew remote learning was going to be tough," Burch said.
A new revised map on the state Department of Education's website that uses the new gold color shows that five counties - Putnam, Fayette, Boone, Logan and Mingo are now in gold. There are only two counties in orange - Kanawha and Monroe. Monongalia County remains in red.
Last Saturday, seven counties came in at orange in the map update and Monongalia County remained red. Putnam, Kanawha, Fayette, Boone, Logan, Mingo and Monroe counties were orange.
The state Department of Education said in a news release Tuesday that as a part of this re-set, students from several counties that were orange in last Saturday’s school alert map update, are now gold and may, at the discretion of their local boards of education, return to in-person instruction Wednesday, Sept. 16. They may also resume activities such as play sports games in-county or against other gold counties. State education officials said these county boards of education may also decide to wait and make decisions based on the Saturday, Sept. 19, school alert system map update.
Dr. Clay Marsh, the state’s coronavirus czar, said counties’ positivity rate also will be included with the new metrics to give another measure. He said the previous system discouraged people from getting tested, the opposite of what officials want to happen.
Marsh also said state officials will be working with local health departments to get them to more stringently enforce the mask order and social distancing requirements.
Justice the previous day had announced that he would huddle with medical experts and his top advisers to explore the idea of adding the gold color. The tweaking of the state’s metrics system follows several protests at the state Capitol by parents, students and athletes in orange counties who have been pushing for in-person classes and sports competitions to be allowed.