COVID-19 UPDATE: Gov. Justice tested live on-air as Aggressive Testing program continues to ramp up; all West Virginia counties out of Red status

Press Release

Gov. Jim Justice joined West Virginia health leaders and other officials today for his latest daily press briefing regarding the State's COVID-19 response.
AGGRESSIVE TESTING EFFORTS CONTINUE TO RAMP UP
During Wednesday's briefing, Gov. Justice announced that he will provide additional CARES Act funding to the West Virginia National Guard and West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources in support of their efforts, working alongside local health departments, to continue ramping up the Governor's Aggressive Testing program across the state.

"We need to make provide the resources that our people need to be able to do all this testing, which is why I was happy to push this additional funding through," Gov. Justice said. "We're already ramping up our testing significantly. But someway, somehow we've got to do even more."

Earlier this week, the Governor announced that any time a county moves to Red or Orange status, free COVID-19 testing sites will be set up in that county within 24 hours. Testing in these counties will be offered on a continual basis until their numbers improve.

Any time a county moves to Gold status, at least one free testing event per week will be held in that county until their numbers improve.

"I urge everyone to take advantage of the free testing opportunities all over our state," Gov. Justice said. "As we keep testing and testing, we might identify a few people who didn't know they had it and stop it from spreading. But more often than not we're going to get good results. You'll see the numbers in your county go down and we'll begin to move in a way to where our kids can go to school, play sports, and do all kinds of other things safely.

"For instance, in Kanawha County, our positivity rate is down to 5.6 percent," Gov. Justice continued. "If we can get you down below 5 percent, you'd be Gold. You see how close that is? We need to get you there. You have got to go get tested."

Also on Wednesday, Gov. Justice provided a look at West Virginia's latest mid-week County Alert System map update, which showed significant improvement with Aggressive Testing efforts underway in several regions.

For the first time since the map's debut, none of West Virginia's 55 counties were classified as Red.

Eight counties were classified as Orange: Boone, Fayette, Kanawha, Logan, Mingo, Monongalia, Putnam, and Wayne counties.

Three counties were classified as Gold: Nicholas, Summers, and Wyoming counties.

Of the remaining counties, 28 were classified as Yellow, while 16 were classified as Green.

The map is updated live on the DHHR's COVID-19 Dashboard (Click "County Alert System" tab) throughout the week for informational purposes and to provide an indication of how each county is trending ahead of each Saturday at 5 p.m.; the time when each county is assigned its official color designation for the next week, which determines the level of scholastic, athletic, and extracurricular activities permitted in each county for that particular week.

To further encourage all West Virginians to get tested and to highlight how easy the testing process is, Gov. Justice was tested for COVID-19 live on-air at the end of Wednesday's briefing.

"Everybody, I hope you all get a lot of enjoyment out of this," Gov. Justice said as members of the West Virginia National Guard prepared to administer the test.

After finishing the test, Gov. Justice added, "That was great, there's nothing to it. It takes just about 10 seconds. There's no pain, just a split second where you might want to sneeze. But other than that, there's nothing to it. I would encourage everyone to go get tested."

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