How We Beat COVID-19

We are starting to see some acceleration of COVID-19 positive patients in West Virginia.

This is not surprising, but gives us reason take inventory of our strategies and implementation. 

We know COVID-19 thrives on person-to-person spread and compounds through interactions. As we have said, a single person can infect 1,000 people in two months, 1 million people in four months, and 1 billion people in six months. That's an incredible number.

We also know that we can affect the viruses transmission rate (R0), which without aggressive social distancing, and home stay is 2.5-3 (the number of new people on average infected by a single infected person) to less than 1. 

This makes the virus die out.  

Dropping the ability for the virus to infect others allows us to win.

Below is an example of why home stay and being highly adherent to this is so important. On March 16, the number of COVID-19 positive people in New York and California was the same. California went into shelter-in-place, and New York did not. Six days later, California had 1000 COVID-19 positive patients, while New York had 15,000.

This is the power we have to break the cycle of spread by the virus. The power of individuals, communities and states to reduce person-to-person contact and block the life source of virus. 

• Staying home.
• Physical distancing. 
• Washing hands.
• Keeping hands away from face, mouth, nose and eyes.

We know, like folks in California, that the investment in really implementing this strategy sustains our goal to get through the first phase of COVID-19 (the acute one) with minimal loss of life and protection of our people and healthcare workers. 

The power to defeat COVID-19 is in our hands. 

Let’s beat the virus together.