Restart economy or extend restrictions? NC Senate leader wants more COVID-19 data
North Carolina’s stay at home order expires in two weeks. The state legislature is back in session in two weeks, too.
The Republican leader of the Senate wants more data about who has had COVID-19 for when the General Assembly returns at the end of April.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has not yet said if he will extend the stay-at-home order into May, or what any loosening of current restrictions will look like as state leaders work to control the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
Senate leader Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican, announced earlier this week that the legislature will spend $100,000 from a discretionary fund on a year-long Wake Forest Baptist Health and Atrium Health study to use antibody testing to find out who has already had COVID-19, the News & Observer previously reported. Berger said the money from the General Assembly’s operations budget is often used for research, and he wants more data for when lawmakers return.
The Wake Forest and Atrium study is similar to other antibody studies also being started at the National Institutes of Health. Wake Forest Chief of Infectious Diseases Dr. John Sanders said the testing includes data entry of symptoms and contacts as well as finger-prick blood tests similar to a blood glucose test.
However, they are not approved clinical tests, and are being done as a research study.
Berger told reporters during a news conference on Wednesday that he hopes to have some data from the test in two to four weeks.
When to restart the NC economy
Berger isn’t ready to set specific criteria or a date for when he thinks statewide restrictions being used to flatten the curve should be lifted. He said determining factors include the degree of confidence in safety parameters in public places like restaurants, whether people are practicing social distancing, guidance for those who have additional health complications to self-isolate, and avoidance of crowds especially for those people who are in higher risk populations.
Also factoring in, he said, is a flattening out of hospitalizations and the level of confidence there is in estimates of the prevalence of COVID-19 in the population.
Sanders said that though only a small amount of data will be ready in the coming weeks, it will provide a hint that can be used as decisions are made “that allow us to return back to a sense of normalcy.”
Berger has been pushing for random sample testing of the state population for the past month.
“From a public policy standpoint it seems to me that the missing piece, the glaring missing piece that we have, is just how prevalent the disease is in the population as a whole,” he said.
The testing is not done in coordination with the state Department of Health and Human Services. DHHS Secretary Mandy Cohen and other executive branch leaders including the governor have been holding daily news briefings with updates about restrictions and number of cases, deaths and hospitalizations.
Berger said Cohen has been resistant to what he says is the need for sample testing, so the decision to use the legislative discretionary fund was based on that.
Cohen told reporters during a news conference on Wednesday that they were not aware of the research effort before it was announced, but that DHHS scientists have reached out to Wake Forest Baptist Health. Coordination and data sharing are always going to be important, she said.
She said what Wake Forest is doing — repetitive testing over a long period of time — is one of many things that need to come together to take a coordinated look at COVID-19 across the state.
The House has been holding remote COVID-19 committee meetings to work on issues around tax relief, education and health care since late March.
With economists already predicting a recession, some lawmakers want to know plans for restarting the economy.
Rep. John Szoka is on the House’s COVID-19 committee focused on economic support. On Tuesday, he said he wants someone from the governor’s office to give them a briefing for reopening the state economy. The subcommittee’s next meeting is April 21.
This story was originally published April 15, 2020 at 2:50 PM.
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