CHARLOTTE, North Carolina – COVID-19 cases across the country, including the Carolinas, are on the rise again – North Carolina on Thursday reported the largest increase in nearly two months.
There were 1,020 new cases with a positive daily rate of 5.5 percent, according to data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS). The number of positive cases is more than double that registered last Wednesday and four times that of two weeks ago.
There have been 492 patients hospitalized for coronavirus statewide.
“Unfortunately, as much as we want this to be untrue, COVID is still in the community,” said Meg Sullivan, Mecklenburg County Medical Director, “And the virus is not only in the community, but now there is a variant highly contagious and potentially more serious in the community ”.
Sullivan said vaccination must remain a priority.
State metrics do not explicitly indicate whether new cases were among vaccinated or unvaccinated people, but nationally, the director of the National Institutes of Health said that unvaccinated people account for 99 percent of new cases.
Experts attribute the increase to the festivities on the July 4 weekend and the delta variant, which is highly contagious.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said they expect to see an increase in hospital admissions for COVID-19 over the next four weeks. National COVID-19 hospitalizations had been declining for months.
North Carolina continues to urge its residents to get vaccinated. As part of that momentum, the two winners of last week’s COVID-19 lottery draw were announced on Thursday.
A Pineville woman won $ 1 million and a Greensboro high school student won a $ 125,000 scholarship.
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