West Virginia marks one year since COVID-19 vaccine availability

CHARLESTON -- Tuesday marked the one-year anniversary since West Virginia started administering the first COVID-19 vaccines, and despite early successes at getting shots into the arms of seniors and vulnerable West Virginians, the state struggles to get more people vaccinated.

"We've still got a lot of work to do, don't we?" said Gov. Jim Justice during Tuesday's COVID-19 briefing at the Capitol. "We've still got many, many that we need to get across the finish line and get vaccinated."

According to the state Department of Health and Human Resources, 70.1 percent of eligible West Virginians older than age 18 have received at least one dose of one of the three available COVID-19 vaccines. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses over a matter of weeks, while the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is single-dose.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration approved an emergency use authorization for the Pfizer vaccine the week of Dec. 14, 2020. The CDC and the FDA approved the Moderna vaccine later that same month.

The Johnson and Johnson vaccine was approved for emergency use in February. The Pfizer vaccine received full approval in August.

West Virginia started out strong, leading the nation with the number of distributed COVID-19 vaccines, beginning with residents and staff of long-term care facilities. The vaccine program was opened up to more eligible residents as more vaccines became available, starting with older West Virginians in phases, teachers and school service personnel, first responders, and residents with pre-existing medical conditions.

"West Virginia, you led the way with the entire nation," Justice said. "While the other states spent weeks cutting through federal red tape, West Virginia was getting the vaccine out to our most vulnerable people."

Vaccine distribution continued to ramp up through the spring and early summer. The state launched the first of several vaccine incentive lotteries using federal COVID-19 relief dollars to spur vaccination rates. Infection numbers, hospitalizations and deaths dropped.

But as the summer wore on, the number of vaccinations slowed among the adult and young populations. Led by the more-contagious delta variant of COVID-19, new cases, hospitalizations and deaths in West Virginia swelled again through late fall.

As of Monday, every West Virginian older than 12 is eligible for the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson vaccines. Children between the ages of 5 and 11 are eligible for the Pfizer vaccine. Yet, only 53.4 percent of eligible West Virginians are fully vaccinated. Only 63.8 percent of the eligible population has at least one dose of a vaccine. And only 30.5 percent of the eligible population older than 16 have received a booster shot.

As a result, COVID-19 is still spreading in West Virginia, straining hospital systems and causing deaths. West Virginia had a slight drop in active COVID-19 cases to 8,002, but hospitalizations remain high at 643 and ICU usage was 209. West Virginia saw more than 5,000 COVID-19 deaths last week. With 54 new deaths since last week's briefing, the death total was 5,114.

Justice said most of the growth in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths is among residents who refuse to get vaccinated even with vaccines readily available for the last year.

"The number of unvaccinated is growing again," said Justice. "Now, only 18 percent of our people in our hospitals have been vaccinated. All the rest, 82 percent, are unvaccinated … it was going the other way."

"We're going to keep at it and we're going to make it through this...I promise you we're making progress," Justice said. "The most pressing thing for me today is to get the people vaccinated to get their booster shot...If you are vaccinated, you're probably not going to be in the hospital and you're probably not going to be in the ICU unit. It's just as simple as that."

(Adams can be contacted at sadams@newsandsentinel.com)