Exclusive: Ex-WVa health chief says cuts hurt virus response

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The former West Virginia public health leader forced out by the governor says decades-old computer systems and cuts to staff over a period of years had made a challenging job even harder during a once-in-a-century pandemic.

Republican Gov. Jim Justice demanded Dr. Cathy Slemp’s resignation on June 24. He complained about discrepancies in the number of active cases and accused Slemp of not doing her job. He has refused to elaborate.

In her first comments about what happened, Slemp declined in a series of interviews to directly discuss the governor’s decision, saying she wanted to focus on improving the public health system. She defended how the data was handled and she detailed how money dwindled over the years. That meant fewer staff, and they were hobbled by outdated technology that slowed their everyday work and their focus on the coronavirus.

Among the challenges: a computer network so slow that people would sometimes lose their work when it timed out; the public's demand for real-time data; and a struggle to feed information into systems designed when faxes were considered high-speed communication.

“We are driving a great aunt’s Pinto when what you need is to be driving a Ferrari,” Slemp said.

A joint investigation published this month by The Associated Press and KHN, also known as Kaiser Health News, detailed how state and local public health departments across the country have been starved for decades, leaving them underfunded and without adequate resources to confront the pandemic.

In West Virginia, spending on public health fell by 27% from 2010 to 2018, according to an AP/KHN analysis of data provided by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. Full-time jobs in the state public health department dropped from 875 in 2007 to 620 in 2019, according to...