NC coronavirus trends stable enough for Phase Two; Cooper decision expected this week
While the state reported sharp increases in deaths and hospitalizations due to COVID-19 on Tuesday, the secretary of the state’s Department of Health and Human Services said the overall trends are stable enough to remove social restrictions on Friday.
“We want to be protecting the public’s health as much as possible here,” Dr. Mandy Cohen said during a Tuesday afternoon news conference. “We think we’ve made some decisions in order to do that. As we look at our numbers, we see them remain stable. We believe we can move forward to easing restrictions.”
Cohen’s assessment came the same day the state reported 30 new deaths, increasing that total to 691, and 74 more hospitalizations. The state on Tuesday reported 585 people hospitalized due to COVID-19, a 21.6 percent increase from the 481 it reported on Saturday.
Cohen said those numbers tend to be lower on weekends.
“We think that’s more of a reporting issue than anything else,” she said.
Hospitalizations are one of the data points state health officials are monitoring as they determine how and when to remove social restrictions they credit with slowing the virus’ spread in North Carolina.
“We’ve largely been in the 500s,” Cohen said of hospitalizations. “So yes, we might be in the higher end of the 500s today, not sure what tomorrow will bring. But I think the overall message is stability there. And is our system able to have the capacity to handle additional infections should they come our way?”
Tracking coronavirus trends
On Monday, Gov. Roy Cooper indicated a final decision and announcement would be made by mid-week about entering Phase Two and ending his stay-at-home order. Cooper and Cohen determined the state was doing well enough in slowing the coronavirus spread to move the state into Phase One of the reopening plan on May 8. That phase goes through at least Friday at 5 p.m.
According to stipulations laid out as part of the state’s three-phase plan, trends must show the virus’ impact is stable or declining in key areas like hospitalizations, lab-confirmed cases, number of people reporting to medical professionals with COVID-like symptoms and the percentage of positive tests.
While hospitalizations have grown over the recent days, the percentage of positive tests remains stable at around 7%. Lab-confirmed cases have increased by 10.1% since Saturday as the state continues to hit and exceed its goal of testing between 5,000-7,000 people per day.
The percentage of people examined in hospital emergency departments who report COVID-like symptoms has dropped from between 4-5% in March to 3% in late April to just above 2% currently, according to DHHS data.
“Hospitalizations is one of four trends that we look at, as well as two to three capacities that we also look at,” Cohen said. “With hospitalizations, because we have a lot of hospital capacity, we’re trying to look at that in the context of ‘is our health system able to handle the number of cases?’ The answer is overwhelmingly yes. So in addition to hospitalizations, we do get a sense of how many other empty beds are there. We know we have capacity in our hospitals.”
Phase Two
If the state moves into Phase Two on Friday, the stay-at-home order in place since late March would be removed.
Some personal-care businesses like hair salons are expected be able to open for the first time in about two months. Restaurants, which have been limited to take-out and delivery services, could serve a limited number of customers on site again. Entertainment venues would be able to reopen but at a reduced capacity.
“We hope that we can move forward into Phase Two,” Cooper said on Monday. “We know it’s important to cushion the blow to the economy. But public health and safety is No. 1. We are going to continue to keep that at the top of the list. We believe that economic prosperity and the health of the people can go hand in hand.”
This story was originally published May 19, 2020 at 4:27 PM.
