PENDER COUNTY According to Pender County officials, a discrepancy in the total Covid-19 case count when comparing
state-level reports arose from a backlog of case reports, compounded with the all-hands-on-deck vaccination effort consuming the county’s public health staff.
Health and human services director Carolyn Moser said a number of factors contributed to the low count on Pender County’s dashboard, which as of Monday night showed about 600 fewer confirmed cases than the state’s total for the county.
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The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for alerting counties to instances of positive Covid-19 tests among individuals who may be county residents, Moser said. At that point, counties assume the responsibility to contact-trace the cases. Whenever any test is administered, regardless of whether it’s in a clinic or testing site, the DHHS obtains the results first, and pushes that information down to the counties.
North Carolina’s Covid-19 numbers continue to rise, hitting a one-day record-breaker of 11,581 cases reported on Saturday, Jan. 9. (Port City Daily/File)
SOUTHEASTERN NC According to the latest numbers from the state’s Covid-19 dashboard, North Carolina has reached a total of 614,355 Covid-19 cases, with 3,871 people hospitalized and 7,425 deaths. Statewide case counts keep breaking one-day numbers for the second weekend in a row. N.C. Health and Human Services (NCHHS) reported 11,581 on Saturday, Jan. 9, following two days of hitting more than 10,000 cases each day.
New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties also are hitting new highs. All three counties are in the red zone, meaning there is critical viral spread of Covid-19, according to the Covid-19 County Alert System.
in the orange zone, signaling “substantial” levels of community spread, according to the statewide Covid-19
County Alert System. Meanwhile, Pender County moved from orange to the “critical” red zone due to its alarming high case and percent positivity rates.
However, the impact on the hospitals in all three counties is considered low, according to the report. The alert system considers a variety of factors at hospitals, from staffing shortages to the number of emergency room visits, as well as the counties’ number of new cases and the percent positivity rates when making designations.
As Covid-19 numbers have picked up in the midst of colder months and increasingly common gatherings over the holidays, just eight of North Carolina’s 100 counties remain in the yellow zone, the lowest level of spread in the three-tier reporting system.