Gov. Cooper issues statewide stay-at-home order as NC coronavirus cases maintain high rate of increase
Gov. Roy Cooper issued a 30-day statewide stay-at-home order on Friday in the hopes of quelling the spread of coronavirus infection to keep hospitals across North Carolina from being overwhelmed by cases.
Cooper’s action follows similar orders in nearly two dozen other states and even some counties and municipalities within North Carolina. The statewide order places stricter limits on how much people can move about. It takes effect at 5 p.m., Monday.
Earlier Friday, state health officials had announced another death from complications of COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus, and the number of state-reported cases made another jump. Rowan County officials confirmed another death Friday evening.
The state’s Department of Health and Human Services reported on its website it has recorded 763 coronavirus cases. Of those, 77 people have been hospitalized.
It’s the fourth consecutive day the state’s total case number has increased by 100 or more. The state’s case total was just 297 on Monday.
Dr. Elizabeth Cuervo Tilson, the state’s chief medical officer, said Thursday the statewide average age of those infected with coronavirus is 41.
The largest impacted age group is 25-49, which accounts for 47 percent of the state’s cases, according to N.C. DHHS. The 50-64 age group makes up 24 percent of cases, followed by 65 and older (14 percent) and the 18-24 age group (13 percent).
The state has now completed 15,136 tests, up from Thursday’s 12,910 total.
Five people have died in North Carolina from coronavirus, four N.C. residents and a Virginia resident who was traveling in the state when he was stricken.
Though 51 percent of the state’s cases are women, all of the deaths are men, according to DHHS data.
Wake County has added limited demographic information about known cases to the county’s website. As of Friday afternoon, the website showed 123 cases, 65 of them female and 54 male. In four cases, gender was left blank. The average age of Wake County patients who have contracted the illness is 44 according to the site.
Durham County announced 10 new cases Friday evening.
The state’s latest casualty of the worldwide pandemic was announced on Friday evening. Local health officials in Rowan County said a coronavirus patient died on Friday. “The patient was in the high risk category due to age and underlying medical conditions,” officials said.
On Friday morning, Johnston County Health Department officials said a patient, aged in the mid-60s with an underlying medical condition, died on Thursday.
That patient’s death came a day after the death of 37-year-old Adrian Grubbs, a Harnett County resident who worked as a supervisor in Raleigh’s Solid Waste Services Department, was announced by state officials.
While the state updates its total number of cases and deaths once a day, usually by mid-morning, the News & Observer tracks additional cases by gathering information from the state and county health departments and updates the totals throughout the day. As of Friday evening, that case total had reached 883 statewide.
State officials have been canvassing hospitals to take a patient population count to determine if medical facilities are getting overwhelmed. On Friday, the DHHS had heard from 81 percent of the state’s hospitals. They reported that, of the 21,222 beds available, 7,184 are empty. That means 33.8 percent are available.
Of the 3,223 intensive care unit beds, 724 are empty. That’s a 22.4 percent availability. According to the DHHS, 77 people around the state were hospitalized with the coronavirus as of Friday at noon.
Small businesses make adjustments
With stay-home requests and directives causing businesses to close or curtail operations at their brick-and-mortar shops, some are finding online business to be more successful than expected.
Raleigh yoga studio operator Patrice Graham was worried about losing income when she had to close down, but has kept all the clients she had an added new ones since going to online-only instruction, The News & Observer reported.
“We have just done our second week of virtual classes and now we are adding classes,” she said. “Our studio capacity is normally 12 people, and for the virtual classes we bumped it up to 15. We have a lot of classes that are full.”
Other businesses are retooling to make items that have been in short supply since the virus hit. Second Nature, a Raleigh-based startup that sells air filters by subscription, has said it will use one of its production lines to make protective masks for health workers.
With the virus spreading to two-thirds of the state’s counties, county and municipal governments have issued stay-home orders to try to slow infection rates, and more are expected. Cooper’s order will supersede those where the state requirements are more strict.
Rallying volunteers to make masks
Medical workers and some people who will have to be out in public even during stay-home orders continue to search for protective equipment such as face masks. An impromptu, volunteer manufacturing force has amassed to supply homemade versions for those who need them most..
The North Carolina chapter of Face Mask Warriors, launched on Facebook last week along with chapters in every other U.S. state, had nearly 1,500 members as of Friday afternoon. They include professional tailors and sewists as well as hobbyists and college students who have been scared to try the machines their mothers gave them — until now.
The groups sprang into action after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that as a last resort, medical workers could shield themselves from patients with a bandana or a scarf.
Kirsten Ozimek saw that, and then saw a message from a friend who said somebody was trying to organize people to sew masks in North Carolina, and she looked over and saw a sewing machine in a corner of a room in her house in Cary.
“I thought, well I can do that,” she said in a telephone interview with The News & Observer. “I mean, I probably couldn’t so a dress, but I could sew that.”
Turned out, Ozimek is better with an organizational chart than a sewing machine, so she has been working with a handful of other volunteers getting and sharing information about who needs masks, what kind and how many, with people who can make them. The group also arranges for masks to be picked up from makers and delivered to users.
Volunteers in the group have so far made more than 3,500 masks, Ozimek said, some of which went to UNC Hospitals before the facility said it didn’t need any more. Others have gone to a hospice for use by visiting family members, medical practices, an ambulance company, a cancer center and businesses that have face-to-face contact with customers.
The masks may help reduce the spread of illness and, Ozimek said, they give people who are stuck at home worried about what’s going on in the world outside something constructive to do.
“We feel isolated, we feel helpless, and we think, ‘What can I do?’” Ozimek said. “Instead of that mass response of, ‘Well, I guess somebody is taking care of it,’ this is a way to step up and do something.”
Staff writers Zachary Eanes and Hayley Fowler contributed to this report.
This story was originally published March 27, 2020 at 11:50 AM.