As coronavirus keeps spreading across NC, National Guard activated and citizens stock up
Coronavirus cases continued to mount across North Carolina on Friday, as state residents did what they could to make life feel as normal and sustainable as possible.
North Carolina counties had reported at least 179 cases by Friday evening, according to The News & Observer’s tracking of cases from county health department announcements.
The state also reported Friday that 3,233 tests have been completed.
During a Friday afternoon briefing with the state Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Elizabeth Tilson, state health director and chief medical officer, said community spread has expanded in the state from one case to three. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, community spread is when someone contracts the illness without traveling to an area where there is an outbreak and without having any connection to a person known to be infected.
In Cary, a Woodland Terrace assisted living resident tested positive for the coronavirus, Matt Towler, executive director the the facility, confirmed Friday in an email statement to The News & Observer. It’s unclear how the person contracted the illness.
“The resident’s family and healthcare authorities were notified immediately,” the statement read. “At this time, the origin of exposure is not known. In accordance with patient privacy laws, additional details about the patient and updates on their condition will be provided only by healthcare authorities.”
Other Woodland Terrace assisted living residents are in quarantine in their apartments. Staff members who were exposed to the coronavirus patient are quarantined at home according to the statement.
Mike Sprayberry, director of the state Division of Emergency Management, said the N.C. National Guard is being activated to help with logistics and transportation of medical supplies, particularly personal protective equipment (PPEs) to all the medical facilities that need them.
With businesses closed or having their hours curtailed, and with those who can do so working from home, traffic in the Triangle was uncharacteristically light Friday. The state Department of Transportation’s real-time traffic map showed nothing but free-flowing green where there usually are tangles of congested red.
But there was a traffic jam in the paper-goods aisle at the Lowe’s Foods in Sanford on Friday morning as a stock clerk set down a pallet of — could it be? — paper towels and toilet tissue.
“Are you about to open those and put them out?” Robin Ober asked, trying to hold back her excitement.
Searching for toilet paper and hand sanitizer
Ober, of Pittsboro, came to Sanford on her day off from her job as a garbage-truck driver to buy some groceries for herself and her mom after checking the stores in her town and finding little.
Her tenacity paid off when she snagged a 12-pack of toilet paper.
She had no luck, however, in finding hand sanitizer.
“We need that in our jobs,” she said. “It’s scary to think that we have to pick up other people’s trash and we have no way to clean our hands. I have one tiny little travel bottle, and it’s just about all gone.”
Elsewhere in the store, empty shelves suggest shoppers continue to stock up on rice, pasta, canned tuna, milk, meat, large bags of pet food and ramen noodles.
At the Bread Basket, a Sanford soup kitchen, president Bill Jones said that at the moment, “We have plenty of food.” He was expecting a truck to arrive at any minute to deliver 10 pallets of non-perishable items.
What he’s worried about running out of, he said, is volunteers.
Like Jones himself, “Most of our volunteers are over 70,” he said, meaning they’re at the highest risk for the most severe symptoms of COVID-19 if they get the illness caused by the coronavirus. Some of them have been coming anyway, but Jones doesn’t know how long that will last.
The Bread Basket serves one meal a day — lunch — through the week. Since the start of the coronavirus threat, it has shortened its serving hours by 30 minutes a day and closed off the dining room, following Gov. Roy Cooper’s orders.
Patrons now pick up a takeout meal from a folding table outside the door. The number of clients stopping by for lunch has dropped, Jones said, from the normal 150 to 200 per day down to 125 to 150.
“We thought about closing,” Jones said, especially after he had a day this week when only four volunteers showed up. “But if we close, our clients don’t eat.”
That’s where the non-perishables will come in. In case he doesn’t have enough volunteers to prepare hot meals, Jones said, crews will be packing bags of canned and boxed items that clients can take with them, enough for a couple of days at a time.
How long to prepare for?
North Carolina residents aren’t sure whether to prep for two weeks or two months of near-house arrest as they try to keep coronavirus illness cases from climbing to levels that could overwhelm healthcare resources.
In New York and California, where COVID-19 has spread faster than it has in North Carolina, officials took more drastic steps on Friday, ordering non-essential businesses to close. In New York, which has 6% of the nation’s population and half the cases of COVID-19, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the order would take effect Sunday night. He said older people should stay inside as much as possible, according to a report in the New York Times.
The Times also reported that California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered his state’s residents to stay home, except for essential trips such as to the grocery store, pharmacy or gas station.
In North Carolina, Gov. Cooper has ordered bars to close and restaurants to stop serving in their dining rooms. He asked that people not congregate in groups of more than 50, and for people to work from home if they can. Other businesses have not been ordered to close, but many have shortened their hours or shut their doors and gone to online commerce.
In counties where case counts have been relatively high, such as Wake, Mecklenburg and Durham, some civic leaders have considered whether to restrict movement more, or even go to a “shelter-in-place” order.
Durham Mayor Steve Schewel said Friday he was still evaluating his support for a regional or statewide order.
“I think that I’m listening to the public health authorities and evaluating that,” Schewel said. “I do think that if we are not there now we are getting there, that’s my opinion. And exactly when that takes place, we had the first transmissions in the state that are community spread, and I think that we are heading in that direction.”
Business closures prompted by the virus have put hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers out of their jobs, according to media reports. In North Carolina, 42,000 people had filed for unemployment benefits by 8 a.m Friday, and Kerry McComber, a state Commerce Department spokeswoman, said nearly all listed COVID-19 as the reason. The number was expected to rise by the end of the day.
UNC System officials made a decision to postpone all spring commencements, which were planned for May, more than a month away.
UNC System Interim President Bill Roper said during a special board meeting Friday that the health and safety of students, staff and faculty are the top priority, The News & Observer reported. Each university will make individual plans to celebrate graduation.
“We believe that spring graduation ceremonies will be disrupted, and it’s time to make alternative plans,” Roper said. “I know and understand that this will disappoint our students and their families who have worked so hard toward this goal for so many years.”
UNC-CH also announced Friday that undergraduate students can choose to be graded as pass/fail for all spring 2020 courses. Those grades will count toward curricular, major, continuation and graduation requirements, but not toward a student’s GPA. Undergraduate students will have until Friday, Aug. 7, 2020 to opt in or out of that pass/fail grading policy.
UNC-CH students enrolled in professional schools or graduate programs will follow the pass/fail guidelines established by those programs. Deans of the graduate and professional schools are expected to make a decision by Friday, March 27.
N.C. State University is also offering students a satisfactory/unsatisfactory grading option for all graduate and undergraduate courses this spring.
A break from standardized tests
With public schools closed through at least the end of March, federal officials announced Friday that students could get a break from dreaded standardized exams this school year, The News & Observer reported. U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said in a news release that the U.S. Department of Education will not enforce standardized testing rules in elementary grades through high school this year because, “students are simply too unlikely to be able to perform their best in this environment.”
The waiver would affect the North Carolina end-of-grade exams given in grades 3-8 and end-of-course exams typically given to high school students.
Gas prices have been dropping in North Carolina as they have across the country. AAA showed the average price for a gallon of regular in the state at $1.99, noting U.S. gas prices are the lowest they have been since 2016.
While that might tempt some people to drive to the coast, most North Carolina beach communities have closed to visitors. Checkpoints at bridges will stop those who don’t have entry passes given to residents, property owners and workers from coming into some beach towns, while all public parking has been closed off in others.
A Civitas poll conducted earlier this week and released Friday found that many North Carolinians are feeling optimistic about their likelihood of catching the virus or becoming seriously ill as a result of it.
Participants were asked, “Taking into consideration both your risk of contracting it and the seriousness of the illness, how worried are you personally about experiencing coronavirus?” In their responses, 51% said they were “not worried” and 48% said they were ”worried.”
The poll also found that 53% of respondents approve of the way the administration of President Donald Trump is responding to the virus, and 41% disapprove.
Staff writers Stephen Wiseman, Kate Murphy, Will Doran, T. Keung Hui and Dan Kane contributed to this report.
This story was originally published March 20, 2020 at 9:44 AM.
