CHARLESTON, W.Va. — More than 20 people make up the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Incident Management Assistance Team that’s working in West Virginia during the coronavirus pandemic.
Testing support through capacity and supplies to support potential reopenings in the Mountain State was one of FEMA’s focus areas.
“A lot has already happened (with testing), but more is coming online,” said MaryAnn Tierney, regional administrator for FEMA Region III.
“Conducting testing to understand what the current prevalence of the virus is in the population is important and then contact tracing is going to be an important part of reopening.”
Contact tracing tracks potential virus spread by following histories of infected people to identify others who may have been exposed.
FEMA Region III had been part of pandemic response coordination with the West Virginia National Guard, the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management and the state Department of Health and Human Resources.
A former director of emergency management in Philadelphia, Pa., Tierney has served as regional administrator for FEMA Region III since Aug. 2010.
Along with West Virginia, Region III includes Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
Those in FEMA Region III and their counterparts across the U.S. had been ramping up work in West Virginia since President Donald Trump issued emergency declarations nationwide in March.
In that time, Tierney said consistent supply access had been one of the biggest challenges.
“I think we are getting more ahead in some areas,” Tierney said. “For example, with N95 (respirator) masks, we’ve made a lot of headway and FEMA’s done some innovative things to bring more supply into the country faster than it would have otherwise.”
Other supply efforts have included food.
FEMA provided more than 300,000 self-stable meal kits to the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Excess food was being distributed to food banks in West Virginia including the Mountaineer Food Bank in Braxton County and the Facing Hunger Foodbank in Cabell Couty which has reported a 40 percent increase in demand in the pandemic.
.@FEMAregion3 Administrator @maryanntierney talks with @HoppyKercheval about the support FEMA has been providing to West Virginia over the last 30 days. WATCH: https://t.co/wkudfIRZCB pic.twitter.com/CGeZM4pLAm
— MetroNews (@WVMetroNews) April 23, 2020