By George Shaw
Summary
COVID-19 numbers continue to improve significantly. The number of new cases and hospitalizations for our state and country has declined to levels last seen three months ago. The number of newly reported deaths in The Tar Heel State dropped 35% compared to the previous week.
However, the number of reported new deaths increased in Wake County. And there were two additional deaths in Zip Code 27587. And the number of new cases rose in Zip Codes 27571 and 27596.
United States
New cases are nearly as low as they were in late July 2021. They averaged 820,000 daily on January 14 and around 100,000 a week ago. They are currently about 60,000 on a seven-day moving average.
Daily deaths continue to average roughly 1,700 over the last week, a reduction of about 15% compared to the prior week. This is a decrease of around 35% since the peak average at the end of January.
The Omicron wave began to have a major impact on deaths by the first of the year. North Carolina’s death total increased 16% since January 1, slightly higher than the 15% reported nationally. The lowest growth among the states has been in Alaska (7%), followed by the District of Columbia and North Dakota. The highest growth has been in Maine (35%), Vermont and Ohio.
North Carolina
North Carolina remains the 26th lowest number of cases among the states. It improved to 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 continue to be significantly less than national figures. The national rate is one death for every 350 residents as of yesterday. The corresponding rate in our state is 1:469. Mississippi has the highest mortality rate (1 in 244 residents); Hawaii now has the lowest rate (1 in 1,077 residents) among all states. Wake County’s rate of 1:1,122 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 251,000, a decrease of 20% 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 18,100, a decline of 26% over the prior week. The last time the number of cases was this low was early December.
The record daily figure for hospitalizations was 5,206 on January 26. This amount declined to 1,468 yesterday. This represents a decline of 31% in the last week.
There were 281 deaths last week, down from the record of 578 set four weeks ago. This is a decrease of 32% in the last week.
Wake County, Wake Forest, Rolesville and Youngsville
There were 1,972 new cases in Wake County during the last week, a reduction of 20% from the prior seven-day period. This level was last reached in early December 2021. Our county recorded 18 new deaths in the last seven days, up from 10 during the previous week.
Zip code 27587 had 152 new cases in the last week, a reduction of 27% from the prior period. The last time that the number of new cases was this low was during the week ending December 8, 2021.
However, cases rose from 26 to 29 in Zip code 27571 and from 36 to 44 in Zip Code 27596.
Two new deaths were recorded in Zip code 27587 last Friday, bringing the total up to 72. There were no new deaths in the other local zip codes.
Zip Code 27587 has had 22,886 cases of COVID-19 during the last two years. This remains the second highest of any zip code in the state, trailing zip 27610 in Southeast Raleigh which has 24,248 cases. However, our zip code had more than twice the number of new cases during the last week.
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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 121 yesterday, a decrease of 24% in the last seven days. The percentage of hospitalized patients in Intensive Care Units in our region increased from 27% a week ago to 25% 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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