NC Gov. Cooper: ‘Testing, tracing, trends’ need work before businesses, schools reopen
Gov. Roy Cooper says efforts to flatten the curve of the coronavirus through restrictions and stay-at-home orders are working, but they are not sustainable. Easing the restrictions, he said, will need to happen gradually.
“This virus is going to be with us until there is a vaccine, which may be a year or more away,” Cooper said Wednesday during a news conference. “That means that as we ease restrictions, we are going to enter a new normal. We want to get back to work while at the same time preventing a spike that will overwhelm our hospitals with COVID-19 cases.”
For business and schools to reopen, Cooper said, three things need to happen: testing, tracing and trends.
“This will allow us to identify who has COVID-19, quickly act to stop the spread and know when we need to dial up or dial down our social distancing policies,” said Dr. Mandy Cohen, secretary of the NC Department of Health and Human Services.
Testing means COVID-19 tests and antibody tests need to be widely available. Cooper said Cohen is working to make sure tests, and personal protective equipment for the healthcare workers who administer the tests, are more widely available. He did not give an estimate of how many tests would be needed.
“We are in a much better place than we were even a month ago,” Cohen said. “There are more labs that are doing COVID-19 testing, wait times have been drastically reduced and the shortage of testing supplies has eased.”
That’s not the case for masks, gowns, gloves and face masks.
“Those shortages of protective equipment means that we just be judicious in how we use these resources,” Cohen said.
The private sector, she said, is making progress on tests that can be self-administered.
Cooper and Cohen said partners are needed to help the state with contact tracing — finding people who have been in contact with others who tested positive. This “detective work” is done by around 250 people working in local health departments, Cohen said.
“Going forward it will take a much larger team to trace who tests positive,” Cohen said. “We are working with partners to ramp up staffing and explore digital tracing.”
Cooper said he wants to see the coronavirus trends — cases, hospitalizations and deaths — to “move in the right direction” in an effort to protect the state.
The state executive order that only allows businesses deemed essential to be open is set to expire on April 29. As state officials determine whether or not to extend the restrictions, and in what form them will be, they’ll watch those three areas before making a decision, Cooper said.
Cooper also talked about what reopened restaurants and sports and concert venues would look like, such as fewer people at eateries and games and concerts with no fans.
“You may see more people wearing masks or having their temperature checked,” Cooper said. “A restaurant you go into may have tables that are only partially full. The only sporting events or concerts that you may be able to watch for awhile will have no in-person crowds.’
As of Wednesday morning, the state’s DHHS reported 5,123 coronavirus cases with 431 hospitalized and 117 deaths.
“Because we acted early and because we acted together, Cohen said, “we have averted the devastating scenarios we’ve seen playing out in other parts of the country and across the globe. As the governor said, now we need to look ahead at how we keep doing that, how we stay ahead of the curve.”
This story was originally published April 15, 2020 at 4:31 PM.