The known COVID-19 infections as of 7:28 p.m. on Tuesday, April 28, was 9,755 confirmed cases throughout North Carolina with 363 deaths. We know many more people were infected and showed no symptoms (asymptomatic) and many other people had very mild cases.
We keep learning of symptoms. “Frostbite toes” is one of the latest and strangest along with loss of sense of taste and smell.
But we are concerned with our town and our area. Yesterday Wake County – 782 confirmed cases and 16 deaths as of yesterday – released information about confirmed cases by municipality after several mayors requested a breakdown of cases within their town limits
It showed that there have been or are 36 confirmed cases in Wake Forest, three in Rolesville, 368 in Raleigh which include 26 cases at the Sunnybrooke Rehabilitation Center and one death, 15 in Wendell, 60 cases in Knightdale where 49 cases and six deaths were at Wellington Rehab and Healthcare, nine cases in Zebulon, 34 in Apex, 75 in Cary, 12 in Fuquay-Varina, 14 in Garner, nine in Garner, and 12 in unincorporated areas.
“We do recognize that due to the lack of widespread testing, the positive case counts in Wake County do not reflect the total number of positive cases in the county,” the News & Observer quoted Darshan Patel, Wake County Emergency Management team leader.
We will probably top 10,000 cases in the state before the end of April. The virus surge of cases in local hospitals has been averted by the stay-at-home orders by both Wake County and Governor Roy Cooper, but there are still infected people all around.
Even after May 8 when the latest state order expires, the wisest course and the safest place is your own home if you are lucky enough to be able to stay there without working.
Some perspective might be helpful. Wake Forest covers 15.2 square miles without accounting for the Averette annexation and has 45,264 residents; Wake County has 857 square miles and 1,111,761 residents as of a year ago; and North Carolina covers 53,819 square miles and has over 10 million residents.
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While you are at home, make sure you have responded to the mailing from the 2020 Census. If you have not responded, you can go to www.2020census.gov and respond there.
Remember, every federal program that involves money is doled out to the state based in part or in whole on the results of the latest census. If you want money to come to North Carolina for schools, roads, colleges, local government, then make sure your household is counted.
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