LOOKING BACK — Gov. Jim Justice was the first to receive a COVID-19 shot in West Virginia in December 2020. Nearly three years since the state saw its first positive case of the virus, West Virginia has passed 8,000 COVID-related deaths. -- Photo Courtesy/WV Governor’s Office

CHARLESTON — It’s been nearly three years since West Virginia saw its first positive case of COVID-19, with state officials marking the somber occasion as West Virginia surpassed 8,000 coronavirus-related deaths.

Gov. Jim Justice praised the state’s response to the novel coronavirus during a virtual administration briefing Wednesday from the Capitol.

“It’s been an all-hands-on-deck battle,” Justice said. “It’s been a lot of dark nights and everything, but at the same time I think we’ve done really, really well in this state to be where we are. I wish it could have been zero, but I think it could have been much, much worse.”

State COVID-19 Czar Dr. Clay Marsh and James Hoyer, who began the pandemic as adjutant general of the West Virginia National Guard and later became the civilian leader of a joint interagency task force on COVID-19 response, participated through a pre-recorded message.

“Three years have gone by since the start, when we didn’t know exactly what would happen, but we knew that we had one of the most vulnerable populations in the United States, and we needed to do everything possible to make sure we protected our most vulnerable citizens, particularly our children and our elderly,” Hoyer said.

Justice first issued the COVID state of emergency on March 16, 2020, one day before the state reported its first positive coronavirus case. Since then, the state has reported more than 644,000 COVID-19 cases, though that number does not include people testing at home.

According to the Coronavirus Dashboard, there have been 8,005 deaths in the state due to COVID, with 29 new deaths reported since last week. The state saw its first known COVID-19 death on March 29, 2020. Justice said the actions taken by the state over the last three years have likely kept that death total from being much higher.

“Today, we crossed 8,005 people in West Virginia who have lost their lives to COVID,” Justice said. “It’s been something that none of us had a playbook for. With an older state, the third oldest in the country, and a state with chronic illnesses and everything, it could have been a disaster that none of us could have ever imagined.”

“We know that a single death is one too many deaths, but as we go forward, we don’t want to become complacent,” Marsh said. “We still want our most vulnerable population and our immunocompromised population to pay particular attention and care that you stay up-to-date on your vaccinations.”

The governor issued a state of preparedness proclamation on March 4, 2020, calling up the West Virginia National Guard and preparing state agencies. By March 12, Justice issued a travel ban for state employees, canceled the girls and boys high school basketball tournaments, and restricted visitation to state nursing homes. The next day, public schools were closed for the remainder of the year.

After a video conference call between governors and then-president Donald Trump on March 16, 2020, Justice issued a state of emergency that remained in place until Jan. 1 of this year. The state reported its first case of COVID-19, an individual in the Eastern Panhandle, on March 17, 2020. By March 23, Justice issued a stay-at-home order for state residents, allowing only essential businesses and employees to work for more than 30 days.

During the first two years of COVID, the state went to a color-coded system for determining when schools could be open or needed to switch to remote learning due to community COVID spread. The state also led the way in vaccinating older citizens and those in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. But overall vaccination numbers have slowed greatly since they became available at the end of 2020.

According to the Department of Health and Human Resources, only 56 percent of the state’s eligible population have been vaccinated for COVID-19, ranging from nearly 90 percent of West Virginians older than 71 to only 23.4 percent of in-state children between the ages of 5-11.