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Senior centers mapping out reopening following Justice announcement

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — There’s a conference call scheduled for Monday between the state Bureau of Senior Services and the county senior center directors from across the state in response to Gov. Jim Justice’s announcement last week that senior centers can reopen after being closed for more than a year due to the pandemic.

Robert Roswall

State Bureau of Senior Services Commissioner Robert Roswall said it was a much-anticipated announcement from Gov. Justice. He said it’s been a tough year for many of the state’s older residents.

Roswall said it’s been isolation for many. They haven’t been able to see their friends.

He said they were looking forward to “getting back into the senior center and being social again.”

The state has close to 200 senior centers and nutrition sites. They all will not be reopening at the same time, Roswall said.

It’s not as though senior services have gone dark in the past year, in fact, they’ve been busier than ever, according to Roswall.

“We served an additional 800,000 meals and we made contact with 2,000 seniors who were never in the Bureau’s data base,” he said.

Most of the meals have been prepared and delivered from the various nutrition sites or been of the grab and go variety.

Roswall said he anticipates the reopenings to begin later this week with the in-person nutrition centers being at the top of the list.

“They all want to get their in-center nutrition programs started up,” Roswall said of the senior center directors. “Then they may bring in maybe the exercise programs or the other activities they had in the center but nutrition is their priority.”

Justice said the senior centers would have to follow certain guidelines. Those who haven’t been fully vaccinated will still have to wear masks until June 20. Roswall said all of those issues will be discussed in Monday’s call.

Roswall said he’s proud of how West Virginia’s seniors have responded to being vaccinated. The latest numbers from the Centers for Disease Control show 82.2%, which is more than 301,000 residents 65 and older have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, 73% have been fully vaccinated.

“We had the senior centers call all of their homebound people to see whether or not they wanted to be vaccinated and we put out some money recently for some billboards across the state (focusing on vaccination),” Roswall said.

He said he expects a gradual transition back into full services offered at the senior centers across the state. Roswall said he also expects a gradual increase of the number of seniors returning to those activities.

“We anticipate they’re going to come back. We may still have seniors that may not want to be out and about but the rest of it we’re going to try and gradually transition,” he said.

Roswall said at some point the number of meals being prepared, which are currently subsidized heavily by federal funds will have to be reduced.

“We can’t sustain those level of services without federal money,” he said.





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