NC governor extends statewide curfew, urges staying home as COVID vaccinations underway
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Wednesday said he is extending the state’s modified stay-at-home order for three weeks, including a curfew, while the state’s top health official issued her own order to direct people to only leave home for essential activities.
The governor’s order will continue to require that people stay home from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. It now will expire Jan. 29 at 5 p.m.
North Carolina has been under Phase 3 of restrictions since the fall, an executive order that has been extended several times. Cooper’s executive order was set to expire Friday.
Dr. Mandy Cohen, secretary of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, also issued a directive telling people to stay home unless they are going to work, school, to exercise, to attend to health care needs or to get groceries.
“We just want to make sure that people understand how serious this is and that people really need to step up and make those sacrifices about not visiting your friends, about not going into places where people aren’t wearing masks, particularly indoors,” Cooper said.
Cooper on Wednesday said vaccine distribution is his administration’s “top priority,” but he and Cohen also warned that it will be months before the state will receive enough vaccine to stop the pandemic, heightening the importance of other public health measures.
“It will take many months to vaccinate everyone who wants it. Until then, I don’t want to lose any more North Carolinians to this pandemic,” Cohen said.
The orders come as all but four counties are considered red or orange under North Carolina’s coronavirus alert system, including 84 with critical spread. Last month, 65 were classified as having critical levels of community spread.
Orange and Chatham counties are among those four counties that are considered “yellow,” for significant community spread. Wake and Durham are in the orange category, for substantial.
The strain COVID-19 is having on local hospitals is among the factors North Carolina considers for the county alert system. Many hospitals throughout North Carolina are scaling back elective surgeries and shifting staff to COVID-19 units as case counts spike.
“This is the most worried I’ve been through this pandemic,” Cohen said. “I think our hospitals are managing, but it’s going to take all of our work to make sure we don’t overwhelm our hospitals.”
The last executive order extension in December included the addition of the curfew. Phase 3 includes restrictions on capacity at restaurants and bars, and bars must be outside only. On-site alcohol sales also stop at 9 p.m., as part of the latest executive order, though Cooper later said bars and restaurants could sell mixed drinks to-go.
However there are many exemptions, including for essential workers, work commutes, childcare, medical needs, grocery shopping and getting food or gas.
North Carolina has remained under a statewide mask mandate since June.
Vaccine rollout problems
North Carolina’s rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has received criticism in many places, including the state’s General Assembly. The Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Medicaid and N.C. Health Choice plans to discuss “planning and execution” of the state’s vaccine distribution during a Jan. 12 committee hearing.
In a Wednesday morning update of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s state-by-state vaccine data, North Carolina’s vaccination rate was 1,308 doses per 100,000 residents. That was up slightly from Monday’s data.
Wednesday, the CDC reported that North Carolina has administered 121,881 “first doses” of vaccine so far, an increase of 20,530 from Monday’s CDC report.
Cohen, during a Tuesday afternoon interview with The News & Observer, said there isn’t any overriding reason why the state’s vaccine rollout has been slow. She pointed to several factors, including that the process began just before year-end holidays, difficulties around data entry and, in some cases, providers lacking the personnel to actually administer doses.
The state started taking steps this week to hasten the vaccination process, with Cooper mobilizing the National Guard to help provide vaccine in urban areas with large medical facilities, as well as in underserved rural areas. Cooper said the mobilization includes about 50 members of the National Guard “for now,” leaving open the possibility of adding more. He noted that the National Guard has been involved in North Carolina’s response to the pandemic for awhile, to include helping with COVID-19 testing.
DHHS also sent a memo to health departments and hospitals saying that future allocations of vaccine from the state’s supply would be, in part, dictated by how much a provider has already used.
“We still want to have access points across our state, but we certainly want to not be having any vaccine built up on the shelf,” Cohen said. “So if folks aren’t able to get out vaccine fast enough, we will send it to others that are able to get it out quicker.”
DHHS plans to launch a hotline for people to learn about the vaccine and to better understand where they can seek out a shot. The DHHS hotline will not be used to book appointments, Cohen said.
Federally qualified health centers will be the next group trained to provide vaccine, Cohen said, with more providers coming online as North Carolina moves to additional phases.
“That will be another opportunity and another access point for people across North Carolina as we move into our next phases,” Cohen said.
On Wednesday, Cohen said if “folks aren’t able to get vaccine out fast enough, we will send it to others who are able get it out quicker.”
She said anyone who is older than 75 should call their local health department or local hospital to schedule a vaccine. “Those are our vaccinators at this point,” she said, and that they are not yet at larger-scale vaccinations as there is still limited supply.
Cohen said all of the state’s vaccine from the federal government has been allocated to hospitals and health departments, adding that some have used up all of the vaccine they were sent while others are operating more slowly.
Cooper said Wednesday he is confident in the vaccine plan going forward.
Schools
Cooper said no changes are planned to the statewide schools opening status. He said the state’s priority now is getting out vaccine effectively and efficiently.
School buildings were closed for most of 2020, with elementary schools allowed to reopen for full-time, daily instruction in October, if their school districts chose to operate with in-person instruction. However middle and high schools have only been allowed to open with restrictions, leading to rotations that put students in classrooms a third of the time.
“We have not heard from superintendents that they want us to take away options for them,” Cooper said Wednesday.
“We still want our children at school as much as they can be and make sure that they are there safely,” he said, including some in-person and remote, and also all-remote options. “At this point we are leaving that option for schools.”
In the Wake County Public Schools System, which is the largest in the state, high school students will return to buildings for the first time of the 2020-21 school year later this month. WCPSS also offers an all-remote option for all students.
Republicans in the legislature have pushed for months for all public schools to be allowed to reopen, with restrictions, for full-time, daily instruction. Cooper is a Democrat who was reelected in November to a second term. The Republican-majority General Assembly convenes for its long session on Jan. 13.
This story was originally published January 6, 2021 at 2:16 PM with the headline "NC governor extends statewide curfew, urges staying home as COVID vaccinations underway."