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COVID-19 cases rising in Randolph

ELKINS — With COVID-19 cases rising throughout the area and across the state, officials from the Randolph-Elkins Health Department are urging residents to take strict precautions.

Randolph County had 22 active cases as of Monday, up from just three active cases two weeks ago, on Sept. 15.

“We are having something of an increase in the number of positive cases and they’re coming from a variety of sources,” Bonnie Woodrum, the Randolph-Elkins Health Department’s infectious disease specialist, said during a COVID-19 update conference call for county officials Monday.

“We’ve had at least one in the school system, we’ve had at least one in an auxiliary unit of the hospital, and at least one in a nursing home,” she said. “If we want to keep functioning and not have to close down schools and close down businesses, we all need to take strict precautions.”

Woodrum said its not only Randolph County that’s seeing an increase in coronavirus numbers.

“We’ve had several associated cases in Tucker, Barbour and Upshur, and we now have 22 active cases in the county (Randolph), so it’s out there,” said Woodrum. “We have no illusion that we’ve caught all the positive cases. So the person you’re standing beside might be positive, so please take precautions.”

The Randolph-Elkins Health Department is currently contact tracing anywhere between 150 and 175 people, Woodrum said, adding that not all of the positive cases in the county are asymptomatic.

“Some are and some of them aren’t,” she said. “Some of them were tested because they were contacts and tested positive and had no symptoms. We had a person test today on the 14th day (incubation) and was positive – they were negative a few days ago. So when we say two to 14 days we’re serious. That’s the reason quarantine time for contacts is 14 days.”

“We are in close contact with our sister counties around us and we have at least one in our county where the exposure was at the bowling alley (in another county),” she said. “Then we had someone that only had contact with a person in a parking lot, but they turned positive.

“According to what I’m hearing on the national report, the mutations that this virus is going through has not yet made it more deadly,” she said. “But it seems that the mutations have made it more contagious.”

West Virginia has seen a total of 15,512 positive cases, according to the state Department of Health & Human Resources.

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