How are we doing with COVID-19?

Governor Cooper announced today that North Carolina will remain paused in Phase 3 through November 13. This is because the trends for COVID-19 generally remain elevated. The Governor emphasized the importance of wearing masks and practicing social distancing. The assessment below updates key metrics at the state, county and local level.

COVID-19 Update

The State of North Carolina tracks four primary metrics to determine whether to relax guidelines on reopening the economy. All of them are trending upwards – more tests, more cases, higher positive testing ratio as well as greater number of hospitalizations. The data for Wake County and ZIP codes in the Wake Forest area are generally flat.

This update shows for the first time a comparison between the criteria of the federal Coronavirus Task Force and local results. Although North Carolina rates a “red” on the number of new cases, the remainder of the criteria tracked are well below the level of concern. And figures for Wake County and our area are lower than those of either North Carolina or Wake County.

North Carolina’s metrics remain good compared to the majority of states. It remains 27th among the 50 states for the number of cases on a per capita basis.  It moved up to 31st for deaths from the virus from 32nd, passing Colorado. It also had the 27th highest rate of tests, up from 28th.

The number of new cases increased from 12,172 last week to 12,677 this week. The weekly growth was about 4%, down from 8% the prior week. However, the number of deaths increased slightly from 163 last week to 176 for this seven-day period, growth of 8%.

The 14-day moving average for most metrics continues to increase. This average for tests sets records peaked on October 19.  Similarly, the percentage of positive cases have resumed growth, a level last seen on September 5. The number of hospitalized cases rose to 1,219 on October 20, the highest level since July 28.

Key metrics improved in Wake County.  New cases declined from 755 last week to 681 this week and the number of new deaths remained low.

The number of cases in our Zip Code 27587 rose by 44 in the last seven-day period, down from 70 the prior week .  No new deaths have been reported since September 19.

Zip Code 27571 (Rolesville) reported 9 new cases this past week up from 4 cases the prior seven days.  Zip 27596 (Youngsville) rose by 6 cases, a decrease from the 12 cases reported for the previous week.  Zip 27571 has reported no deaths; Zip 27596 continues to report a single fatality.

Federal Guidelines

The federal Coronavirus Task Force has developed stoplight charts for the states on three metrics which have not been officially published but the data is available. North Carolina is currently rated “red” for the number of new cases but safely below the criteria for the positive test rate and the number of deaths. Both Wake County and Zip 27587 are well below the red ratings for the criteria.

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