Marsh sees signs of Omicron plateau as state reports 46 Covid deaths

J. Damon Cain, The Register-Herald, Beckley, W.Va.
·4 min read

Jan. 29—Friday's report: For the optimists in the crowd, Dr. Clay Marsh was offering no guarantees at the daily pandemic press briefing, but he was intimating that the state may be near, at or just past the peak in the state's latest surge fueled by the Omicron variant.

"It looks like we might be starting to plateau and maybe even start to go over the coming downside," Marsh said during the state's pandemic briefing on Friday, "although that may be premature and we'll see how things unfold coming up in the next several days."

Hospitalizations from Covid were down by 25 to 1,063, off a record 1,088 on Wednesday, according to the daily count by the Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR). But the metric had jumped from 989 patients one week ago Friday, and from 198 on Thanksgiving.

The previous hospitalization record was set Sept. 24 with a count of 1,012. Just a couple of months earlier, on July 3, there were 52 patients in hospitals across the state being treated for Covid.

Marsh continued: "We know there's always a delay between the cases starting to come down and the number of hospitalizations and the severity of illness and then finally the number of deaths."

On Friday, the DHHR also reported 46 deaths, 17 from routine daily accounting and 29 from reconciliation of underreporting. Seventeen were from the nine-county region that serves as The Register-Herald's primary market, including a 39-year-old female from Raleigh County.

The number of patients in an intensive care unit for Covid treatment was 225 on Thursday, up five from Wednesday. And the number of patients on a ventilator for breathing support was up by four to 122.

New cases were reported at 4,668 on Thursday, down from 5,205 on Wednesday but up from 2,748 on Tuesday.

On Thursday, there were a reported 17,098 active cases in the state, down from 17,525 the day prior and down from 18,149 the day before that. Last Thursday, the state reported 16,742 active cases.

A promising sign, the positive test rate fell to 17.63 percent, still high but the lowest mark in the past 18 days and the first day in that time to come in below 19 percent.

In the Friday report, the DHHR confirmed the deaths of a 55-year-old female from Berkeley County, a 73-year-old male from Raleigh County, a 55-year-old male from Mercer County, a 67-year-old male from Taylor County, an 83-year-old male from Hampshire County, an 84-year-old male from Taylor County, a 66-year-old male from Berkeley County, a 66-year-old male from Ohio County, a 95-year-old male from Mercer County, a 64-year-old male from Berkeley County, a 65-year-old male from Monongalia County, an 86-year-old male from Jackson County, a 54-year-old female from Monroe County, a 56-year-old female from Cabell County, a 94-year-old female from Brooke County, a 61-year-old male from Wood County, and a 97-year-old male from Berkeley County.

Included in the total deaths reported on the dashboard as a result of the Bureau for Public Health's continuing data reconciliation with the official death certificate are a 59-year-old female from Jefferson County, an 82-year-old female from Lewis County, a 67-year-old male from Mercer County, a 36-year-old female from Berkeley County, a 72-year-old female from Fayette County, an 82-year-old male from Harrison County, a 65-year-old male from Barbour County, an 88-year-old male from Marion County, a 71-year-old male from Fayette County, a 55-year-old male from Wyoming County, a 67-year-old female from Logan County, a 75-year-old male from Marion County, a 71-year-old female from Mercer County, a 51-year-old male from Kanawha County, a 90-year-old male from Wyoming County, a 101-year-old female from Morgan County, a 77-year-old male from Brooke County, a 79-year-old male from Raleigh County, a 67-year-old male from Ohio County, an 85-year-old female from Greenbrier County, a 38-year-old male from Wayne County, a 57-year-old male from Raleigh County, a 39-year-old female from Raleigh County, a 94-year-old male from Raleigh County, a 77-year-old male from Raleigh County, an 82-year-old male from McDowell County, an 81-year-old female from Putnam County, a 78-year-old male from Marion County, and an 87-year-old female from Logan County. These deaths range from November 2021 through January 2022, with one death occurring in August 2021.