NC officials remain hopeful on coronavirus trends, even as ‘the overall picture is mixed’
Thursday’s briefing with Gov. Roy Cooper and state Department of Health and Human Resources Secretary Mandy Cohen was a bit like the old game of Magic 8-Ball as the two considered the likelihood of a May 9 phased reopening of North Carolina.
“Outlook good,” “Signs point to yes,” they seemed to say after looking at one chart of metrics. Then, as if shaking the 8-Ball and studying another chart, they came back with, “Cannot predict now,” or “Reply hazy, try again.”
While the state seems unlikely to hit every milestone the governor laid out last week in his plan to start lifting restrictions that have been in place since March 28 to reduce the spread of COVID-19, Cooper and Cohen said two important indicators — the number of tests conducted and the percentage of those that are positive — are encouraging.
Citing guidance from President Donald Trump, state health officials are monitoring four trends related to the virus’ spread and severity while also considering testing capacity as part of their decision-making process.
“We remain hopeful that the trends will be stable enough to move us into phase one next week,” Cooper said during the online news conference.
“I would say while the overall picture is mixed,” Cohen said, “we remain hopeful. ... We are going to continue to watch this closely.”
With 561 new cases recorded over the previous 24 hours, the state’s official total Thursday stood at 10,509. The number of deaths tied to the coronavirus went up by 24 to 378.
The increase comes as the state is reporting a greater number of completed tests in recent days. DHHS reported a new total of 128,036 tests have been recorded since the pandemic began last month. That’s an increase of 9,596 completed tests over Wednesday’s update.
As of Thursday, cases of the virus had been reported in 98 of the state’s 100 counties.
The number of patients hospitalized by COVID-19 fell by five to 546.
The News & Observer is keeping a separate tally based on DHHS and reports from county health departments, which tends to be higher because the state updates its total just once a day. On Thursday evening, that count stood at 10,755 cases and 406 deaths.
At least 169 deaths from COVID-19 in North Carolina have occurred in nursing homes, according to DHHS. On Thursday, Wake County announced an outbreak — defined by the state as at least two cases — at a third nursing home in the county.
The county’s public health team said the outbreak is at Capital Nursing and Rehabilitation Care in Raleigh. The release did not say how many cases there were. The county says it will not release information about the residents or employees. The nursing home is the 50th in North Carolina to have an outbreak since the pandemic hit, according to state reports.
Epidemiologists say the virus spreads easily in congregate living arrangements. A third inmate in a North Carolina prison has died after testing positive for the illness, state officials said Thursday.
The inmate, a man in his 70s who had been suffering from other health problems, had been housed at Neuse Correctional Institution, in Goldsboro, the site of one of the largest coronavirus outbreaks in the nation. He was the second inmate at Neuse to die from COVID-19 complications.
Wake County restrictions allowed to expire
Before Cooper amended his executive order requiring North Carolinians to stay home except for essential work and travel, Thursday would have been the last day of what those who oppose the restrictions have come to refer to as “lockdown.” Cooper extended his stay-home order through May 8.
Wake County is allowing its restrictions, which were put in place before the governor’s and were more strident, to expire, meaning the county will defer to statewide orders. As of Friday, the county will allow gatherings of up to 10 people, as well as up to 50 people at a funeral, as long as those outside an immediate household are six feet apart.
Churches may open if they have fewer than 10 people. Also, drive-in church services are allowed beginning Friday.
Promising treatments announced
Since the outbreak began, researchers in the U.S. and around the world have been testing the efficacy of new and emerging drugs alone or in combination as possible treatments for COVID-19, while others work at developing a vaccine to prevent infection.
In North Carolina, Duke Health, WakeMed and UNC Health are among hospital systems using plasma from survivors of COVID-19 to treat people who are still struggling with the illness.
And as demand for the so-called convalescent plasma grows, UNC Health has begun collecting donations from survivors, and WakeMed may soon do the same, The News & Observer reported.
Doctors don’t know yet if plasma from COVID-19 survivors will help other patients recover — and will do it without harmful side effects. But because there are no known cures for COVID-19, the Food and Drug Administration has allowed doctors to give it to severely ill patients and requires them to report the results to the Mayo Clinic, which is overseeing the program.
“We have no other validated effective therapy,” said Dr. Luther Bartelt, an infectious disease researcher at the UNC School of Medicine. “And historically convalescent plasma has been used and, in certain settings, looks promising.”
If convalescent plasma proves effective at stopping COVID-19, isolating the antibodies would be a crucial step in creating a treatment for the illness, researchers said.
On Wednesday night, researchers in North Carolina said a drug they have been testing as part of national research appears to shorten the duration of the illness.
Remdesivir was developed through an academic-corporate partnership between Gilead Sciences and the Baric Lab at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Administered intravenously, it shortened the illness by four days in trials, UNC said.
Working on the economic recovery
While scientists search for medical solutions, state legislators Thursday looked for ways to mend the economic injury caused by the shutdown of all but “essential” business for the past month.
State legislators returned to Raleigh this week to decide how to spend $3.5 billion in federal funds coming to North Carolina to help deal with the pandemic. On Thursday, the state House passed its $1.7 billion COVID-19 response bill, called the Pandemic Response Act.
The package includes millions in funding for education, healthcare, food banks, small business loans and other COVID-19 relief.
It also includes money for coronavirus testing, contact tracing and tracking data trends as well as Personal Protective Equipment, the News & Observer reported.
Task force to guide school reopening
State Superintendent Mark Johnson announced Thursday the formation of a task force to help reopen public school across the state.
North Carolina’s public schools are closed for in-person instruction for the rest of the school year, with no certainty about when they’ll reopen next school year. Johnson said that the bipartisan Schools Reopening Task Force will work through the challenges of reopening, such as what social distancing guidelines will be needed to allow people to safely return.
“We are getting the message out to parents and teachers that what we’re going through right now is not the new normal,” Johnson said at Thursday’s State Board of Education meeting. “We recognize that this situation is not sustainable. So we today are launching a task force that will focus on how we reopen schools in the fall.”
Staff writers Jonathan M. Alexander, Keung Hui, Anna Johnson, Kate Murphy, Brian Murphy, Richard Stradling and Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan, as well as the Charlotte Observer’s Ames Alexander, contributed to this report.
This story was originally published April 30, 2020 at 11:33 AM.
