NC tops 11,000 new COVID-19 cases for first time since start of pandemic

For the first time since the start of the pandemic, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is reporting more than 11,000 new positive COVID-19 cases.

Saturday’s number of new cases was 11,581, which is the highest one-day number of COVID-19 cases.

This comes after the state reported back-to-back days of more than 10,000 COVID-19 cases on Thursday and Friday.

The percentage of positive cases increased to 14.8%.

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There were 97 additional deaths reported on Saturday, meaning at least 7,425 people in North Carolina have now died from COVID-19 in less than a year.

The number of people hospitalized with the virus remained steady at 3,871.

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Note: The numbers we show you every day mean everything in how our community recovers from coronavirus -- both in terms of healthcare and the economy -- but they don’t mean much without the proper context and as much transparency as possible.

New cases vary day by day based on a lot of factors. That can include how long it takes to get results back, so a new case reported today can really be several days old.

The other big metric we watch is the percent of positive cases. This is data we can only get from the state because it’s not as simple as factoring a percent of new cases each day from the number of tests. That’s because test results take days and come from a variety of places.

WHAT ABOUT CLOSER TO HOME? MECK COUNTY METRICS STILL TROUBLING

As of Saturday morning, there were 70,128 cases of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) with 615 deaths due to COVID-19 reported among Mecklenburg County residents.

Highlights about the 67,623 COVID-19 cases reported in Mecklenburg County as of January 6, 2021 include:

About 3 in 4 reported cases were adults ages 20 to 59 years old.
About 1 in 20 reported cases were hospitalized due to their COVID-19 infection. While everyone is at risk for severe COVID-19 complications, reported cases who were older adults (≥ 60 years) were more likely to be hospitalized compared to younger individuals.
About 8 out of 10 have met CDC criteria to be released from isolation.
During the past week, an average of 793 laboratory-confirmed infections per day were reported compared to the 14-day average of 699 confirmed infections. This represents an increase over the last 14 days. These data are based on Mecklenburg resident cases reported to MCPH.
During the past week, an average of 508 individuals with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infections were hospitalized at acute care facilities in Mecklenburg County. This represents an increase over the last 14 days. These data are based on daily census counts from acute care facilities in Mecklenburg County reporting to MCPH.
During the past week, an average of 16.0 percent of individuals who were tested in Mecklenburg County were positive for COVID-19. This represents an increase trend over the last 14 days. These data only include ELRs for molecular (PCR) tests submitted to NC DHHS for laboratories electronically submitting negative and positive COVID-19 results.
Six hundred-six deaths due to COVID-19 occurred among reported cases.
Almost all deaths were among older adults (≥ 60 years), 9 deaths occurred in adults ages 20 to 39 and 73 deaths were adults ages 40 to 59.
All deaths, except fifteen, occurred among adults with underlying chronic illnesses.
Almost half were non-Hispanic Whites. The disparity in COVID-19 deaths among non-Hispanic Whites is related to differences in race/ethnicity of residents of long-term care (LTC) facilities actively experiencing an outbreak.
Nearly half of deaths were connected to active outbreaks at long-term care (LTC) facilities.
Among deaths not connected to outbreaks at long-term care facilities, nearly 3 in 4 were non-White, with 40 percent being non-Hispanic Black. As previously noted, these disparities are largely driven by higher rates of underlying chronic conditions that increase risk of severe complications due to COVID-19 infection among these communities
Based on publicly available mobility tracking data, social distancing represents a fairly stable trend in Mecklenburg County over the last 14 days.