By George Shaw
Executive Summary
Trends have switched from mixed to negative in the last week. This is in part caused by the impact of the Easter holiday weekend in the prior week when facilities for testing were closed and information reporting was delayed. The data for North Carolina during the most recent seven days are at their highest level in the last six weeks for new cases and ten weeks for the rate of positive testing. Key information for Wake County and our Zip Code 27587 have similarly increased significantly recently. Yet, the elevated data for new cases and the positive test rate remain a fraction of the worst days of mid-January. The number of vaccinations was at an all-time high in the last week.
Key COVID-19 Data
North Carolina’s ratings remain better than most of the states. It went from the 15th to the 14th 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 2,816 cases on April 6 and has risen 23% to 3,456 yesterday. However, this rise is modest compared to the peak number of cases of 23,200 cases on January 15.
Trends for the last seven days moved from mixed to negative in our state. New tests in North Carolina are up 2% vs. being down 15% the prior week. The number of new cases are up 31% (vs. down 17%) during the prior week. The percentage of positive tests increased from 5.1% to 6.6% in the last seven days. Hospitalizations grew 3% during the last week.
The number of new cases in North Carolina are at their highest level since the week of March 3. However, they remain only 23% of the peak week of January 13. The positive test rate was the highest since the week of February 17 but it is only a fraction of the peak rate of 12.6% in mid-January.
North Carolina’s County Alert System was last updated on April 1. The next update is scheduled for April 15 when the rebound in cases may impact the ratings. No counties are currently rated red, 21 are orange and 47 yellow. Our state added new categories for moderate (light yellow) and low (green for 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? 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.
3.4 million Tar Heels have received their first dose while 2.3 million have their second shots as of March 30. An additional 242,000 have a vaccine requiring a single shot. The number of new shots increased from 401,000 to 472,000 doses administered during the last full week (April 5). This is the largest weekly total since vaccinations were first reported in mid-December. 31% residents of Wake County have received partial doses and 23% have completed their requirements.
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New cases in Wake County increased 40% in the last week, compared to a decrease of 23% during the prior week. The number of new cases in our Zip Code 27587 declined from 84 to 123 during the last week. Zip Codes 27571 (Rolesville) held steady at 10 new cases last week and 27596 (Youngville) remained dropped from 35 to 27 new cases. In addition, there were only 10 additional fatalities in our county in the last seven days. There were no new fatalities in our area during the last week.
| North | Wake | Zip | Zip | Zip | ||
| Data as of 4/14/2021 | Carolina | County | 27587 | 27571 | 27596 | |
| Total Cases | 939872 | 83239 | 6284 | 708 | 1645 | |
| Total Deaths | 12325 | 702 | 48 | 1 | 5 | |
| Percent Deaths | 1.3% | 0.8% | 0.8% | 0.1% | 0.3% | |
| Cases (last 7 days) | 13974 | 1591 | 123 | 12 | 27 | |
| Increase over prior 7 days | 30.9% | 39.8% | 46.4% | 20.0% | -22.9% | |
| Deaths (last 7 days) | 113 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Cases/100 Population | 8.96 | 7.61 | 8.44 | 9.58 | 8.82 | |
| Frequency (1 in x people) | 11.2 | 13.1 | 11.8 | 10.4 | 11.3 | |
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.
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Outlook for the Future
The April 8 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 forecast has become slightly more pessimistic in the last week. Our state is forecast to fall below the red zone on April 24, the same date as predicted the prior week. This model predicts this figure to drop to around 3,500 a week by June 4 compared to May 23 in the prior forecast. IHME forecasts that North Carolina will have less than 10 deaths per day by June 8 vs. June 3 in the prior report.
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