RALEIGH, N.C. (WAVY) – Gov. Roy Cooper announced Thursday that North Carolina will move to open the COVID-19 vaccine eligibility to the rest of Group 4 beginning March 31. This includes essential workers in hospitality and retail, chemical and pharmaceutical facilities, construction, housing and real estate and other essential sectors.
This is an accelerated timeline.
On April 7, the state will open eligibility to Group 5, which means all adults will be eligible for the vaccine at that point.
“We’ve been faster and have gotten more supply than we had anticipated, and that’s fantastic,” Cooper said.
Gov. Cooper, along with the Coronavirus Task Force, announced the accelerated timeline during a Thursday afternoon live briefing.
The state expects to have enough vaccine for anyone who wants one within the next couple months. When that happens, Cooper said, “each of us is going to have to talk with our friends and family who are hesitating about getting vaccinated and convince them to do it.”
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reported 2,112 new COVID-19 cases Thursday, which is the highest single day case count since March 4 (2,502).
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Another 93 deaths were reported on March 25, but NCDHHS said that the total includes 68 from June 1, 2020, to March 8, 2021 that were identified by the Wake County Public Health Department after a review of vital records data. Only 25 were actually reported over the past 24 hours.
The daily percent positive has dropped to 4.2 percent based on the latest data. It had been creeping up lately, reaching 6.1 percent yesterday.
There are currently 945 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in North Carolina, which is a drop of 36 from Wednesday.
Dare County’s Director of Health & Human Services Sheila Davies said the vaccine is already making a difference in infections.
“We have seen dramatic decline in the number of individuals 65 and over who have contracted the virus,” Davies said in a video posted on the county website earlier this week. “In large part this is because this population was one of the first to be vaccinated and we have had a very large of individuals in this age group get vaccinated.”
** NOTE: Tableau, which hosts the NC COVID-19 dashboard data is currently experiencing outages, so the individual county case updates and other data is not available at this time.
