Community spread of coronavirus is happening in NC, Gov. Roy Cooper says
Community spread of coronavirus has been confirmed in a North Carolina case, Gov. Roy Cooper said Thursday.
The patient was in Wilson County, one of more than 100 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in North Carolina.
Before the announcement, all North Carolina patients had been exposed to a person who had tested positive or had been connected with people who traveled from elsewhere.
“This is an expected but still unfortunate benchmark in this new pandemic,” Cooper said at a news conference.
Dr. Mandy Cohen, the state’s Department of Health and Human Services secretary, said Thursday documented community spread means the state’s response moves to a new phase, going from containment to mitigation.
What’s next
Cohen has said often during the past week she though community spread was likely but had yet to be confirmed. Because of that, state leaders have taken steps to prevent widespread outbreaks of the virus since the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a worldwide pandemic on March 11.
“We’ve already put in some aggressive steps across North Carolina to slow the spread of the virus,” Cohen said.
Last Saturday , Cooper ordered all K-12 schools closed for two weeks. Cooper said Thursday that with the crisis expanding, it’s clear schools will be closed for a while.
Cooper has also ordered restaurants and bars to stop dine-in service. In conjunction with that, he relaxed rules to make it easier for employees affected by that decision to file for unemployment benefits.
Cooper also issued an executive order banning gatherings of more than 100 people, making it a misdemeanor offense. Cohen and Dr. Elizabeth Cuervo Tilson, the state’s chief medical officer, recommend following the Centers for Disease Control’s advice to limit mass gatherings to fewer than 50.
Because these steps are already in place, Cohen said, Thursday’s confirmation of community spread didn’t trigger further restrictions.
“Those may have been steps we would have taken once we got laboratory confirmed community spread,” Cohen said. “But we said, you know what, we’re already seeing the other states, we’re seeing the other countries, we’re going to even go early here in North Carolina to try and get ahead. We made the assumption that there was already community spread. And we were right.”
Cooper said Thursday he’s not ready to order “shelter in place” measures. He wants to focus on getting medical centers the resources they need first.
“We know we are going to have many more patients,” Cooper said. “So making sure that we are mobilizing our resources to ramp up our ability to take care of people. We’ve got to focus on that.”
Cooper was scheduled to take part in a conference call, along with his fellow governors, with President Trump Thursday afternoon. Cooper planned to seek a “significant infusion of help” from the federal government.
“We need to make sure that North Carolina and other states get critical medical supplies, equipment, testing supplies,” Cooper said. “We are also concerned about making sure that the federal government recognizes the economic loss that our state, and other states, are facing.“
This story was originally published March 19, 2020 at 1:10 PM.