By George Shaw
Summary
Major decreases in all COVID metrics at the national, state and local levels continue. This column has recently measured the decline from peaks reached in the December-January time frame. The focus will now shift to a more positive metric – how much the current levels are above the low figures recorded last fall just before the impact of Omicron as well as last July immediately preceding the impact of the Delta variant.
There were only five new deaths in Wake County in the last week as well as no new deaths in our three Zip Codes in the prior nine days.
Next week will include both an update on the virus as well as a major refresh of the employment/unemployment data.
United States
New cases are nearly as low as they were in mid-July 2021. They averaged 820,000 daily on January 14 and around 60,000 a week ago. They are currently about 40,000 on a seven-day moving average.
Daily deaths continue to average roughly 1,300 over the last week, a reduction of about 25% compared to the prior week. This is a decrease of more than 50% since the peak average at the end of January. However, the most recent weekly average remains about 40% above the corresponding level from late November when Omicron hit. It also remains about five times the number of deaths in mid-July 2021.
North Carolina’s death total increased 18% since January 1, higher than the 16% reported nationally. The lowest growth among the states has been in Alaska (9%), followed by North Dakota, Montana and Rhode Island. The highest growth has been in Maine (40%), Vermont (28%) and Ohio (26%).
North Carolina
North Carolina remains the 26th lowest number of cases among the states and the 11th lowest mortality rate from 12th last week. It also has the 29th highest rate of tests per capita.
The mortality rate for our state and local areas continues to be significantly less than national figures. The national rate is one death for every 346 residents as of yesterday. The corresponding rate in our state is 1:465. Mississippi has the highest mortality rate (1 in 241 residents); Vermont now has the lowest rate (1 in 1,064 residents) among all states. Wake County’s rate of 1:1,116 is better than any of the states. Zip Code 27587’s rate is 1:1,034 which is a lower mortality rate than all states except for Hawaii and Vermont.
The number of tests for the last seven days is 177,000, a decrease of 19% in the last week. This is the lowest weekly total since the seven days ending on July 28, 2021.
New cases reached a high of 217,000 in the week ending January 19. The amount for the week ending today is 11,980, a decline of 34% over the prior week. The last time the number of cases was this low was late November.
The record daily figure for hospitalizations was 5,206 on January 26. This amount declined to 1,093 yesterday. This represents a decline of 26% in the last week. This is the lowest number of hospitalizations since November 21, 2021.
There were 193 deaths last week, down from the record of 578 set four weeks ago. This is a decrease of 31% in the last week and the lowest seven-day total of deaths since late December.
Wake County, Wake Forest, Rolesville and Youngsville
There were 1,462 new cases in Wake County during the last week, a reduction of 26% from the prior seven-day period. This level was last reached in early December 2021. Our county recorded five new deaths in the last seven days, the lowest level since early January.
Zip code 27587 had 83 new cases in the last week, a reduction of 45% from the prior period. The last time that the number of new cases was this low was during the week ending July 21, 2021.
In addition, cases declined 59% in Zip code 27571 and 71% in 27596. These were the smallest weekly amounts since mid-November and late July, respectively. There were no new deaths in our three Zip codes since February 26.
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The Capital Region is an area of five counties centered on Wake County used by the state to aggregate data on data for hospitals. The number of new hospitalizations peaked at 411 in our region on January 30. It was 88 yesterday, a decrease of 27% in the last seven days. The percentage of hospitalized patients in Intensive Care Units in our region increased from 27% a week ago to 30% yesterday.
The North Carolina Department of Health & Human Services updated its list of recent outbreaks in our area yesterday. There is no change from the report from the prior week when Hillside, Brookdale, Cadence and Wake Forest Montessori reported outbreaks.
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