By Phil Kabler, Charleston Gazette-Mail
October 8, 2020
Gov. Jim Justice on Wednesday backed healthy West Virginians “flooding” COVID-19 testing sites, saying it shows people want public schools open.
“There’s nothing wrong with people flooding a testing site because they want to go back to school,” Justice said, when asked about reports of organized efforts to flood testing sites with people, who know they are negative, to lower county positivity rates for COVID-19.
“More power to them. They want to go back to school. That’s fine with me,” Justice said during his COVID-19 briefing.
He closed the briefing by telling viewers, “Please, please, please flood us.”
State COVID-19 czar Dr. Clay Marsh later tweeted a clarification, saying Justice, “interpreted the question as to flood testing sites with people from the county, not to have people intentionally repetitively test only to open schools. We all agree that people should be tested if worried, exposed, curious or doing public service. We do not support repetitive testing only focused at driving negative tests to reduce the percent positive rate solely to influence school opening or sports.”