WVU's Dr. Clay Marsh gives updates on COVID-19

Combatting the spread has taken over everyday life, leading WVU to suspend in-person classes and switch most operations online in a board decision on Wednesday.

Justice also ordered all casinos, bars and restaurants to close to patrons other than take-out services. 

These steps are being taken because of how quickly COVID-19 spreads, according to Marsh. 

"This is a virus that jumped from an animal source — from bats — to people. We generally don't have native immunity to viruses that don't start in people," he said. "The biggest strength with this virus ... it gets the highest concentrations of the virus in someone's bodies before they even know they have it. ... This virus is highly infectious."

The situation has evolved rapidly, and Marsh said even a few weeks ago he had a completely different outlook, but so much more information has emerged.

"I wasn't nearly as impressed and respectful of this virus as I am now," he said. "People are working now to understand the complete extent of how it spreads... We need to stay away from each other, this virus really relies on people-to-people spread."

Social distancing to stop the spread of COVID-19 can greatly impact how the pandemic plays out and the death tolls.

"The death rate is much higher if you overwhelm the health care system," Marsh said. "As we look at West Virginia, we believe it's very, very important to keep the disease from spreading. This is an opportunity for us to be very aggressive about separating people."

Vaccines and medicines are being worked on to help people and the state is trying to roll out more testing, according to Marsh. And in the meantime, the United States and West Virginia are heavily monitoring the situation in Italy because, Marsh said, the death rates could match or be higher than Italy's.

By Tuesday, Italy recorded 31,506 positive cases and 2,503 deaths, more than anywhere outside of China.

"We can slow the tsunami wave to stream," Marsh said of impacting the infection rate. "This is the time to do it."

And while people have been expecting this to go on for two weeks or so, Marsh said while there's a lot of uncertainty, some projections have it going much longer — about six to eight weeks or more.

"The virus now has spread pretty widely," he said.