HOW DID HILLBILLY W. VIRGINIA ACHIEVE COVID-19 SUCCESS?

By Lisa Cavazuti and Laura Strickler

NBC News

West Virginia's early success (in COVID-19 testing and vaccination) is all the more striking given that a study published by the Kaiser Family Foundation in April 2020 ranked it as the state with the greatest share of adults at risk of serious illness if infected with COVID.

In an Appalachian state known for country roads, mountains and a dying coal industry, the population has long suffered from high rates of comorbidities including smoking and chronic conditions that drive its low overall health ranking.

But the state's unique characteristics have in many ways aided its COVID response.

West Virginia, a small and mostly rural state with a large elderly population, was tagged early on as a place likely to struggle with COVID-19 and any vaccine rollout.

But the state is now being hailed as a vaccine success story, with 85 percent of its delivered doses already used, according to Centers for Disease Control data, putting it second in the country behind North Dakota as of last week.

A key part of the strategy, health officials say, was the decision not to activate a federal partnership with the CVS and Walgreens pharmacy chains and instead rely on independent drugstores
West Virginia was actually ahead of much of the nation in its Covid response from the start of the pandemic, due to careful planning and — again — its close-knit, small-town culture. A serendipitous encounter at a football game gave the state an edge in Covid testing last spring, they said.

Two months before the White House required testing of all nursing home residents in mid-May, West Virginia was already negotiating with an executive of Labcorp, a national chain of blood and medical test sites.

Dr. Marsh, the state COVID czar, had met the executive, a West Virginia University graduate, at a college football game in Morgantown. Marsh got in touch and the two men were soon hatching a plan for state-wide testing, which they rolled out on March 5. Their public-private partnership tested all 28,000 of West Virginia's nursing home residents in just two weeks.

The state also created a “team of teams” — leveraging the National Guard early on to come up with and run an operations command center that focused on inter-agency communications and work with the Department of Health and Human Resources, the governor's office, and the state's health officers.

The National Guard has been involved with the state's response since November, running distribution from the state's five hubs. That includes logistical support for the receipt and transport of vaccines — helping to repackage vials and appropriate refrigerated containers to sites where stability can be maintained.

Through a partnership with another company, Everbridge, the consortium has now created a pre-registry system so that each person can be assigned a place in line and notified when and where they can be vaccinated. In the first four days after launching the system, Marsh says over 100,000 people signed up.

After initially experimenting with first come, first served clinics unsuccessfully, he says it was trial and error that led his team to the registry platform. Without the ability to predict the precise dose allotments it will receive each week, it was a challenge to meet demand — something the pre-registry system is now intended to address.

According to the CDC, as of Saturday West Virginia had given out more second doses per capita than any other state, with more than 3 percent of the population fully vaccinated.