West Virginia’s coronavirus map that determines whether classroom instruction can occur for the next week had no counties in red and just a couple — Kanawha and Wayne — shown as orange.
That means those two counties must continue with remote learning and can’t yet have extracurricular activities.
More counties were gold. That means in-person instruction can occur with heightened precautions including face coverings for students in grades 3 and above. Extracurricular activities are permitted only in that county or with other gold counties.
Gold counties included Fayette, Logan, Mingo and Summers counties.
All other counties were green or yellow.
The map is based on data through midnight Thursday, then reviewed by a panel of state health officials.
This Saturday’s version of the map was affected by a change made by state leaders. Early versions were determined by daily positive covid cases on a rolling average and adjusted for 100,000 population.
Gov. Jim Justice announced an adjustment to allow county status be determined by percent positive cases instead.
“Whichever metric, whether it’s the infection rate or the percent positive rate — whichever of those two metrics is better — will be the metric that’s applied for the color code of the county,” Clay Marsh, the state’s coronavirus response coordinator, said Friday.
A daily map at the Department of Health and Human Resources website on Friday showed most of the state on green, reflecting that change.
There were also several instances of adjustments by a panel of health officials who review the map before it is released every Saturday evening.
- Barbour County: Moved from yellow to green as the percent positivity is less than 3% over a 14-day average. Barbour County was assessed with a 14-day average rather than a 7-day average due to the number of total cases in the 7-day average being below 20.
- Wyoming County: Moved from gold to yellow as the percent positivity is less than 3% over a 14-day average. Wyoming County was assessed with a 14-day average rather than a 7-day average due to the number of total cases in the 7-day average being below 20.
- Monongalia County: Moved from yellow to green using the percent positivity rate due to the exclusion of isolated students at Arnold Hall at West Virginia University.
- Fayette County: Moved from orange to gold using the percent positivity rate due to four cases being transferred to another county during data validation.
- Boone County: Moved from orange to yellow using the percent positivity rate due to six cases being transferred to another county during data validation.
- Morgan County: moved from green to a yellow based on two additional cases being included as new cases for Morgan County for a 7-day average based upon county of residence.
Editor’s Note– the review panel originally moved Marshall County from yellow to gold but later Saturday night returned it to yellow status after further review. Marshall County will be yellow for this week of school construction.