By George Shaw
Executive Summary
Trends continue to be mixed a week after the significant relaxation of stay-at-home orders. No information was collected for three days over the Easter Weekend. Therefore, the most recent data may be somewhat understated. The number of hospitalized cases reached a seven month low last Saturday but has rebounded about 15% in the last ten days.
Key COVID-19 Data
North Carolina’s ratings remain better than most of the states. It went from the 16th to the 15th lowest among the 50 states for the number of cases. It remained the13th lowest state in deaths per person well as the 27th highest rate of testing.
Readers have expressed concern that several states such as Texas have completely reopened. The Lone Star state removed restrictions including those on masks and social distancing on March 10. The seven day moving average was 4,899 new cases on that date. What has happened with COVID since then? It usually takes at least two weeks for a change in policy to impact the numbers. The moving average trended down to 3,398 new cases by March 24 and was 2,886 as of yesterday.
Trends for the last week continue to be mixed. New tests in North Carolina are up 18% vs. being flat the prior week. The number of new cases are down 17% (vs. up 25%) during the prior week. The percentage of positive tests remained 5.3%, a bit above the key metric of 5% of new cases. Hospitalizations dropped to 887 on March 27 but increased 16% since then.
North Carolina’s County Alert System was last updated on April 1, 2021. No counties are currently rated red, 21 orange and 47 yellow. Our state added new categories for moderate (light yellow) and low (green risk of community spread. 31 counties are coded light yellow but only Allegheny County on the Virginia border is listed as green.
How is Wake County doing compared to the other 99 counties? Not as well as in the prior assessment. Our county ranks 84th in the number of new cases (up from 68th) and 55th in percent of positive tests (up from 48th). Wake’s share of North Carolina’s cases has been slowly rising since mid-January. Several counties near Wake remain a substantial risk of community spread (code orange). These include Franklin, Harnett, Moore and Nash. And, Orange County is code yellow.
3.2 million Tar Heels have received their first dose while 2.0 million have their second shots as of March 30. An additional 152 thousand have a vaccine requiring a single shot. The number of new shots declined from 454,000 to 381,000 doses administered during the last full week (March 29). This reflects a slowdown as the Easter weekend approached. 296% residents of Wake County have received partial doses and 19% have completed their requirements.
There are two outbreaks currently reported in Wake Forest as of April 6, 2021. Four staff and one student have also tested positive at Envision Science Academy.
| 14 Day Moving Averages | Data | State | ||||||||
| Criteria | 17-Mar | 24-Mar | 31-Mar | 7-Apr | Trend | Guideline | ||||
| Testing | 35842 | 34395 | 34403 | 31684 | Down | Level or down | ||||
| New Cases | 1704 | 1742 | 1829 | 1682 | Down | Level or down | ||||
| % Positive Cases | 4.75% | 5.06% | 5.32% | 5.31% | Down but > 5% | 5% or less | ||||
| Hospitalizations | 1080 | 989 | 944 | 954 | Level | Level or down | ||||
| Source: covid19.ncdhhs.gov/dashboard | ||||||||||
| Notes: | ||||||||||
| o It usually takes 3-4 days for complete data to be reported. | ||||||||||
| o Color Coding from NC County Alert System (4/1/21) | ||||||||||
| Risk of Community Spread | Color | Cases | % Positive | |||||||
| Critical | Red | > 200 | >10% | |||||||
| Substantial | Orange | 100-200 | 8-10% | |||||||
| Significant | Yellow | 20-100 | 5-7.9% | |||||||
| Moderate | Lt Yel | 19-Oct | 3-4.9% | |||||||
| Low | Green | <10 | <3% | |||||||
|
|
|
New cases in Wake County declined 22% last week, extending the decrease of 4% during the prior week. The number of new cases in our Zip Code 27587 declined from 112 to 84 during the last week. Zip Codes 27571 (Rolesville) decreased from 18 to 10 cases last week and 27596 (Youngville) remained dropped from 41 to 35 new cases. In addition, there were only 8 additional fatalities in our county in the last seven days, the lowest level since late February. No new deaths were reported in our area during the last week.
| North | Wake | Zip | Zip | Zip | ||
| Data as of 4/7/2021 | Carolina | County | 27587 | 27571 | 27596 | |
| Total Cases | 925898 | 81648 | 6161 | 696 | 1618 | |
| Total Deaths | 20124 | 692 | 48 | 1 | 5 | |
| Percent Deaths | 2.2% | 0.8% | 0.8% | 0.1% | 0.3% | |
| Cases (last 7 days) | 10678 | 1138 | 84 | 10 | 35 | |
| Deaths (last 7 days) | 8012 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Cases/100 Population | 8.83 | 7.46 | 8.28 | 9.42 | 8.68 | |
| Frequency (1 in x people) | 11.3 | 13.4 | 12.1 | 10.6 | 11.5 | |
Federal Guidelines
The federal Coronavirus Task Force has developed stoplight charts for the states on three metrics. This is one of the indicators to help understand better when our state will continue to reopen. Areas exceeding the federal guidelines are shown red. Similar to indicators previously discussed, the numbers for new cases are moving in the wrong direction for North Carolina but improving for Wake County as well as our zip code.
| Federal Guidelines (data for last seven days) | ||||||
| North Carolina | 17-Mar | 24-Mar | 31-Mar | 7-Apr | vs. Guideline | Guideline |
| New Cases | 9587 | 10734 | 12870 | 10678 | 102% | 10500 |
| Positive Test Rate | 5.0% | 5.5% | 5.3% | 5.3% | ||
| Deaths | 162 | 137 | 218 | 100 | 48% | 210 |
| Wake County | ||||||
| New Cases | 1284 | 1526 | 1468 | 1138 | 105% | 1085 |
| Deaths | 17 | 13 | 27 | 8 | 37% | 21.7 |
| Zip 27587 | ||||||
| New Cases | 84 | 145 | 112 | 84 | 109% | 77 |
| Deaths | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0% | 1.54 |
| Notes: | ||||||
| o Wake County added 68 additional deaths on March 25. Breakout by Zip Code | ||||||
| is unknown. | ||||||
Outlook for the Future
The April 1 update to the IHME Model from the University of Washington shows a slight increase in the forecast for cases and deaths in North Carolina through July 1. The level for our state to be below the “red zone” for federal guidelines is about 10,500 new cases per week.
The metrics have changed slightly in the last week. The update for our state to fall below the red zone moved back a day from April 23 to April 24. This model predicts this figure to drop to around 3500 a week by May 23 compared to May 28 in the prior forecast. IHME forecasts that North Carolina will have less than 10 deaths per day by June 3 vs. June 4 in the prior report.
#
