News-Register File Photo COVID-19 dominated both the news and the lives of the people of the Ohio Valley this year, as the virus significantly altered the way people went about their daily lives.

WHEELING — It seemed as if the Ohio Valley were at the end of a supply line which kept the worst effects of COVID-19 from setting in as quickly or dramatically as in other places, but once the pandemic set in, the valley was hit as hard as anywhere.

Mounting Death

Tolls and

Climbing Case Loads

The spread of the disease began worldwide in late 2019, with the first deaths in America coming months later in early February. The first death attributed to COVID in West Virginia was reported on March 29, an 88-year-old in Marion County.

More than a week after that, on April 6, the Ohio Valley saw its first death from the disease in Belmont County.

Ohio County saw its first death a week later on April 13. Marshall County would not see its first casualty until August, when the Marshall County Health Department announced that a 73-year-old man on a ventilator had died.

New cases and deaths alike would continue to be announced near daily in both Ohio and Marshall counties, escalating most notably in November. Dozens of cases, as many as 64 in one day, were announced alongside the day’s death toll each evening by the Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department and the Marshall County Health Department.

By Dec. 23, Ohio County had reported a total of 37 deaths and 2,449 cases of COVID in total; the health department did not differentiate between recovered and active cases. Marshall County announced the previous day’s total of 1,548 confirmed cases and 277 probable cases, 360 active cases in isolation at home and eight hospitalized. Forty-six deaths had been reported.

In late November, Wheeling-Ohio County Health Administrator Howard Gamble said that the rise in cases did not represent a “spike” tied to specific events or incidents, but rather represented how the spread of disease plays off itself.

“As you have more cases, it has the capability to be spread faster,” Gamble had said. “This virus is airborne, and as long as it has hosts, it can keep up the momentum. In other words, it passes from one to the next, to the next, and it can keep the momentum going up and up and up, unless you have one of two interventions.”

Those interventions, Gamble said, are either biological, such as a vaccine, or public health measures, such as what county health departments and governmental orders work to enforce.

The large number of cases proved to be a serious burden on health care workers, who spoke in November of the toll the workload took on them personally and professionally. Clerical staff were taken off their typical duties in order to assist with contact tracing, and employees regularly worked 12-hour days during the worst of the pandemic to conduct community testing and work through the day’s work load, occasionally working for weeks on end without a day off due to the ever-increasing number of cases.

“It’s been tough on my own health,” Marshall County Health Department Nursing Director Misty Merinar said in November. “I ended up having a heart attack when this first started, and I’ve had heart issues and just all kinds of stuff. … It gets to the point where I just have to say, I’m done. Just yesterday was like that — every part of my body hurts, I don’t feel good, I’m tired, I’m done.”

Social Distance, Emotional Distance

Learning to keep a safe distance from one another when possible became second nature to some over the course of the year, and the need to limit public gatherings lead to mass closures of businesses, schools and events beginning in March.

On March 13, a Friday, Gov. Jim Justice announced that in-person learning would not resume the following week, in what would ultimately be a closure which lasted through summer vacation.

“I’m closing the schools, that’s all there is to it,” Justice said. “I feel in my heart the probability is likely that we will have to close our schools. To me, the risk outweighs the good…we’ll close the schools as long as we have to close the schools.”

Schools reopened in West Virginia with heavy restrictions in early September, with in-person classes being held twice a week for half of the student body, with remote learning held on Wednesday to clean the schools.

Numerous stores were shuttered on Justice’s order on March 16, with non-“essential” businesses being ordered to close their doors at 8 p.m. Justice’s idea of an essential business was fairly broad, with a wide array of businesses being allowed to remain open; grocery and hardware stores, human services organizations and childcare facilities, laundry services, banks and financial institutions, religious institutions and media outlets were allowed to operate unhindered, to list just a few of the more than two dozen exceptions noted at the time.

Businesses such as restaurants, campgrounds, and specialty retail stores were allowed to reopen May 21, with many now operating with restrictions on how many people may be in a store at one time, and, of course, with a mask suggested for entry — a restriction which is not always enforced or obeyed.

Wheeling’s downtown was particularly quiet this summer, normally lively with numerous street festivals, outdoor events, and weekend activities, ranging from the Memorial Day weekend Ogden Newspapers Wellness Weekend to the popular Upper Ohio Valley Italian Heritage Festival. With heavy restrictions against public gatherings, even outdoors, the popular events were canceled fairly early on in the season.

The Italian Festival was forced to announce the first time in its 38-year history that it wouldn’t return to the city in mid-April, more than three months ahead of its late-July date, due to safety concerns, as thousands of people have been known to flock to Heritage Port and mingle.

“We just didn’t have a choice. We’re dealing with people’s lives,” said event coordinator Janice Whipkey at the time of the cancelation. “Everyone was booked, and everyone was ready, but a decision had to be made because now is the time when we have to start making deposits.”

Good for What Ails You

Despite the tumultuous Year of the Coronavirus, the first steps toward emerging from a particularly bleak start to the decade are happening.

On Dec. 15, the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were distributed, with frontline health care workers being the first to be inoculated with the Pfizer-manufactured vaccine. Under the state’s vaccine rollout plan, health care workers were the first to receive the vaccine, with long-term health care providers and residents, then “other” health care personnel making up the first three phases of the rollout, alongside “critical infrastructure” personnel.

Afterwards, education faculty and personnel are scheduled to receive theirs, rounding out Phase One of the rollout; some educators are already filling out paperwork to receive their vaccines as of Christmas Eve.

Following that, Phase Two consists of mass vaccinations among the community, distributing the vaccine to vulnerable groups first.

Gamble said that as of the holiday weeks closing December, the state is currently still in Phase 1B, long-term health care, due to the holiday season. He said the state has not yet instructed the county to move on to the next phase, consisting of other health care employees and critical infrastructure personnel, such as first responders. Due to the number of people in this group, Gamble said, the vaccine will be targeted toward certain age categories at a time.

“We’ve gotten a lot of discussion, and we got some heads up that some other entities may be coming online, so we want to get them vaccinated,” Gamble said Wednesday. “Phase 1C, my understanding is, they’re still looking at people age 50 and older. They’re saying, this is a larger group, we need to go with a higher age category, to narrow it down a little bit more. They’re more at risk, and it helps us pare it down a little bit, prioritize. If you just open it up to everyone from teens on up, we’re going to have a problem.”

There are currently two vaccines approved for distribution, one from Pfizer and another from Moderna. Others are currently in development, but have not yet been approved for distribution by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Gamble said that when more vaccines become available and logistics allows for more efficient distribution, the area will likely start to see the number of cases start trending downward.

Gamble was unable to provide a specific date for when the vaccines would be made available to educators and when the schedule would move on from there. On the plus side, Gamble said the infrastructure was in place to distribute vaccines quickly once received.