Buncombe County s COVID-19 metrics keep improving and vaccination efforts keep gaining steam, but officials worry that good news will lull residents into relaxing safety measures.
Updating the county Board of Commissioners March 16, Public Health Director Stacie Saunders laid out the latest good news, but stressed that the stats only improve if folks keep up with the 3Ws and limiting interactions.
Vaccine efforts are already having a positive impact in the community, she said, and other key indicators are either improving or staying steady. Seeing our trends come back into a more favorable area is welcomed, but it does worry me just a little that folks will see all this green and become complacent, Saunders said, referring to the metric dashboard that rates those numbers by color.
COVID-19 metrics down, vaccines up as officials urge continued caution
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Buncombe County officials urge caution despite COVID metrics improving
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North Carolina added more than 12,000 new COVID-19 cases Feb. 3, thanks to a backlog of cases from December and January that previously went unreported.
The state Department of Health and Human Services dashboard shows an addition of 12,079 new cases Feb. 3, which would be the most one-day addition ever, beating 11,581 on Jan. 9.
But a note says that 7,912 of those were from tests performed at FastMed Urgent Care clinics during December 2020 and January 2021 that had not been previously reported to NCDHHS.
Accounting for those, the new cases Feb. 3 come to 4,167.
The addition increased the total in the state to 776,307 since the start of the pandemic.
The addition increased the total in the state to 764,228 since the start of the pandemic.
As of Jan. 31, COVID-19 deaths in the state totaled 9,409.
In Buncombe County, another 67 cases reported Feb. 2 increased the new total to 13,469 and a total of 253 deaths.
Hospitalizations
Hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients across the state dropped for the seventh day in a row, with 2,741 reported as of Feb. 1, down from 3,368 reported Jan. 25.
The state reported 261 confirmed positive patients admitted in the previous 24 hours.
At Mission Health, there were 124 lab-confirmed COVID-19 patients across its area hospitals, reported spokeswoman Nancy Lindell.
Of patients in the hospital as of 6:30 a.m. Feb. 2, 96 were at Mission Hospital in Asheville, eight at Angel Medical Center in Franklin, three at Blue Ridge Regional Hospital in Spruce Pine, eight at Mission Hospital McDowell in Marion and nine at Transylvania Regional Hospital in Brevard.