ST. CLAIRSVILLE — COVID-19 vaccinations were set to begin this morning for frontline workers at Wheeling Hospital and WVU Medicine Reynolds Memorial Hospital in Glen Dale, a massive step toward curbing the spread of a virus that claimed eight more Belmont County lives over the weekend.

The hospitals’ frontline workers represent the first part of the first phase in West Virginia’s vaccination rollout. They will receive the Pfizer version of the vaccine, which gained federal approval for emergency distribution Friday night.

Wheeling Hospital Assistant Vice President Tony Martinelli said hospital staff traveled to Morgantown on Monday to retrieve the first doses of the vaccine.

“Our staff has done a great job combatting this pandemic for the past nine months,” he said. “We were extremely excited to begin vaccine rollout in order to keep them protected.”

Vaccines at both hospitals will be administered on a voluntary basis. Wheeling Hospital said its shots will be administered on a tiered system. Criteria include the amount of direct patient care, units involved, areas with high exposure risk, critical functions to the hospital and groups with risk for staffing shortages. The hospital hopes to have its staff vaccinations completed by mid- to late January.

A release from WVU Hospitals, which owns Reynolds and manages Wheeling Hospital and Barnesville Hospital, said it had not yet received any notice of when additional allotments of the vaccine will be available following the first one. The goal is to vaccinate every faculty and staff member and resident who wish to be vaccinated as soon as possible. To qualify for more doses, the hospital must exhaust the initial allotment. The vaccine involves two shots administered about two weeks apart.

Meanwhile, Belmont County Deputy Health Commissioner Rob Sproul said Monday that a total of 56 residents have died after becoming infected with the coronavirus. That number stood at 48 Sunday evening.

All eight additional victims were residents of long-term care facilities, Sprouls said.

The most recent deaths include: two women in their 90s, one in her 80s and one in her 70s as well as four men, all in their 80s.

The Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department also reported two more COVID-related deaths Monday, and the Marshall County Health Department reported one. In Ohio County, one person was a long-term care resident and another was hospitalized at the time of their deaths. In Marshall County, a 50-year-old hospitalized man died.

That marks 32 COVID deaths in Ohio County and 39 in Marshall County since the pandemic began. Ohio County also reported 38 new positive cases, bringing its total to 2,148. Marshall County also reported 35 new confirmed positive cases and 21 more probable cases, bringing that county’s totals to 1,441 confirmed cases, 247 probable cases and 11 hospitalizations.

The Northern Panhandle remained in high-risk categories on the West Virginia Department of Health’s daily COVID-19 alert map.