RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) – North Carolina’s COVID-19 trends continue to move in the wrong direction as its daily percent positive rate increased from 7.9 to 8.1 percent on Monday.
The state’s daily percent positive of COVID-19 tests has been as low at 5.9 percent a recently as Nov. 6 but has increased sharply over the last several days.
Dr. Mandy Cohen with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services said she wants the daily percent positive to be at 5 percent or less.
NCDHHS announced 1,972 lab-confirmed cases of the disease on Monday – just two days after a record-setting 3,885 were reported over the weekend.
Here are the latest updates from local counties:
- Bertie 799 cases– 21 deaths
- Camden 160 cases – 3 deaths
- Chowan 573 cases – 18 deaths
- Currituck 280 cases – 4 deaths
- Dare 538 cases — 3 deaths
- Gates 186 cases – 5 deaths
- Hertford 917 cases – 38 deaths
- Pasquotank 997 cases – 35 deaths
- Perquimans 292 cases – 4 deaths
North Carolina has 314,207 confirmed cases. Later Monday, NCDHHS will release information about the number of patients who have presumably recovered from the virus.
A total of 27,125 tests were completed over the last 24 hours, NCDHHS reported.
Hospitalizations remained at an elevated level on Monday as compared to any other time during the pandemic.
Late last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new reporting requirements for hospitalizations – causing a sharp increase the North Carolina’s numbers.
The new guidance calls for those facilities to report COVID-19-related hospitalizations for the entire length of a patient’s stay. Previously, the federal agency only required the reporting of patients during the time they were under isolation precautions — a period of time that usually reached a maximum of 21 days.