Feb. 9. The downward slide in hospitalizations attributable to COVID-19 continues. The NC Dept. of Health & Human Services said statewide COVID-related hospitalizations were at 3,812 as of noon today, down 26 percent from the peak on Jan. 27.
Deaths
Deaths, which lag hospitalization data, climbed by 157 in today’s NCDHHS report, up from 76 new deaths yesterday.
New cases
There were 10,513 new COVID cases statewide in today’s report. That’s up from fewer than 5,000 in each of the past two days, but lower than any day Feb. 2-4.
Positivity rate
The statewide COVID positivity rate fell to 20.2 percent after a climb yesterday to 23.4 percent
—In Mecklenburg, the 14-day trailing average slipped to 24.1 percent positive.
Mecklenburg
There were 780 new COVID cases and four new deaths countywide.
North Mecklenburg (change from Tuesday)
• Cornelius: 21 new cases, 6,460 cumulative total, 34 deaths cumulative total.
• Davidson: 16 new cases, 3,928 cumulative total, 21 deaths cumulative total.
• Huntersville: 46 new cases, 14,695 cumulative total, 85 deaths cumulative total.
The pandemic is over. Unless you’re planning to start reporting daily on new cases of cancer, flu, or the common cold, please stop reporting on COVID every day.
Tom:
I think Dave is providing a great service for business owners to judge how the pandemic is doing locally and to give business owners another input of data to compare what is being spewed on national news. The information is so political sometimes we don’t know what to believe. While I may agree with you that this pandemic is nearly over an the masks should come off. I do like the frame of reference of the data in North Mecklenburg.
John Hettwer
Just as an FYI, there were 173 COVID-related deaths in North Meck from Dec. 31 to Feb. 9 and 2,056 during the same time period statewide as per the NCDHHS. We’ll report on that in today’s COVID update.
What does COVID-related mean? Are these deaths due to COVID or deaths of people who also tested positive for COVID when they died? Any co-morbidities? Ages? I’m not trying to drag this debate out. I agree with Mr. Hettwer’s comment on the politicization aspect and the skewed national news reporting. My point is that a short blurb every day that just lists raw numbers without any context is just as bad as the politically-oriented spins you see out there every day. They do nothing but stoke fear and confusion.