Also doesn't surprise me the phone call message was misrepresented.

That pretty much mirrors what we've been saying here for a while. NC just throws the numbers out, freaks out about any increase, and throws up their hands. They have the power to do the testing and track down the source of these outbreaks, they just seem to lack the give a damn to do it.

Wayland said:

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BTW. NC finally updated their excess deaths with the CDC through May and guess what???? There were none.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

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Wayland, is this graph saying that NC has not experienced any week of excess deaths this whole year?

kmb717 said:

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Wayland said:

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BTW. NC finally updated their excess deaths with the CDC through May and guess what???? There were none.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

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Wayland, is this graph saying that NC has not experienced any week of excess deaths this whole year?

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Yes. According to CDC.

packgrad said:

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As I begin the end of week sipping, the frustration of testing negative for antibodies increases. I have been in the quarantine Petrie dishes (Home improvement stores and grocery stores) multiple times every work day since this quarantine started. Literally every day. No off days Monday-Friday. With and without masks It was impossible to find them early. Multiple times a day, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Wake Forest, Cary, Mebane, Burlington, Greensboro. I question how contagious this virus is, or question how much it has hit NC.

I'm quite frustrated that we have shut down society, aside from a few spots where we allow everybody, that I frequent all the time, and I haven't been exposed. How is that possible?

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They can't say it now...but I suspect in a couple of years they'll start admitting that the shutdown didn't work and wasn't necessary. Instead, what they should have done was test, quarantine everyone with the virus and protect the vulnerable people as well as possible.

Bottom line is, everyone was going to get Covid. All the shutdown was supposed to do was keep the hospitals from being swamped. It didn't do that, because NC was never going to have our hospitals overrun in the first place. Just not densely populated enough to have an outbreak like NYC or Italy.

And if these figures about there not being any "excess deaths" are correct....that's confirming what I've suspected all along: That they are counting anyone who dies positive with Covid or with Covid symptoms as a "Covid death", when many died from other reasons.

So if they had the flu, but tested positive for Covid also, it counts as a Covid death, not flu. They haven't considered that while a person might get the flu and then have Covid as well, they might well die from the flu and Covid doesn't affect them at all. Nobody's gotten into it that far, yet.
You can have pneumonia and still be one of the people who are asymptomatic with Covid as well...it doesn't automatically mean Covid is deadly to you. But they're still counting the deaths as Covid nonetheless.

So anyway, in a couple of years, they're going to back off some of the definitive "the shutdown kept the hospitals from being overrun" crap. But they can't admit that now, obviously.

Pacfanweb said:

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They can't say it now...but I suspect in a couple of years they'll start admitting that the shutdown didn't work and wasn't necessary. Instead, what they should have done was test, quarantine everyone with the virus and protect the vulnerable people as well as possible.

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We didn't have the testing capacity or contact tracing infrastructure in March to test and quarantine. It's how some countries have essentially eliminated the virus but their testing capacity per capita and tracing ability was/is much higher than ours.

It's June and we still don't have an adequate testing and contact tracing system in place.

Hopefully federal and state governments learned their lessons this time around and will spend the money to preemptively prepare better for the next one. PPE, testing, and contact tracing systems and supplies need to be robust.

Wayland said:

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Wayland said:

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BTW. NC finally updated their excess deaths with the CDC through May and guess what???? There were none.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

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Wayland, is this graph saying that NC has not experienced any week of excess deaths this whole year?

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Yes. According to CDC.

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BTW, here is that same graph with the COVID deaths marked. Again, I would take that last week with a grain of salt since there is likely lag still. And FWIW, NC is about the last state to post their data. Other states are weeks ahead.

Yesterdays Congregate Settings finally updated on DHHS. 25 of 28 deaths reported yesterday were congregate/unknown. Remember how lagged the deaths were yesterday.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
689 Deaths are now Congregate (+23)
88 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+2)
+28 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

315 Deaths assumed General Population (+3)
777 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+25)

181 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (0)
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6/1/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 11:00am)

NC Cases*
29,263
NC Deaths**
898
Currently Hospitalized
650
Completed Tests
421,908

559 Deaths are now Congregate (+7)
72 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+1)
+12 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

267 Deaths assumed General Population (+4)
631 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+8)

162 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+2)

WRAL is at 923 (+2) and NandO is at 944 deaths

674 positive cases over 5619 new tests. 12.0% positive rate.

3 of the deaths reported by DHHS today are over 10 days old. Expect a spike in hospitalizations tomorrow, hospitals have been slack in reporting on the weekends.

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6/2/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases*
29,889
NC Deaths**
921
Currently Hospitalized
716
Completed Tests
434,921

574 Deaths are now Congregate (+15)
76 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+4)
+23 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

271 Deaths assumed General Population (+4)
650 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+19)

163 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+1)

WRAL is at 933 (+2) and NandO is at 961 deaths

626 positive cases over 13,013 new tests. 4.8% positive rate.

DHHS is now releasing updates at noon instead of 11am. Apparently they need an extra hour to process increased testing data. Tough decisions on what data to release on what day to support narratives.

There is that jump back in hospitalizations I called yesterday now that most of them are reporting again.

5 of the deaths reported today occurred over a week ago. The remaining 17 all fall between 5/27-6/1.

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6/3/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases*
30,777
NC Deaths**
939
Currently Hospitalized
684
Completed Tests
449,263

585 Deaths are now Congregate (+11)
80 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+4)
+18 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

274 Deaths assumed General Population (+3)
665 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+15)

163 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+0)

WRAL is at 952 (+2) and NandO is at 980 deaths

888 positive cases over 14342 new tests. 6.2% positive rate.

Every day for the last 8 days contains at least 1 death reported in today's total.

26 of the deaths reported by the media but not reported by DHHS are coming from three counties.
Carteret - DHHS 3, NandO 9, County - 3
Robeson - DHHS 14, NandO 26, County - 22
Alamance - DHHS 20, NandO 28, County - 23

Media reporting that unfortunately, NC has had its first death of a minor due to COVID-19 complications.

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6/4/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases*
31,966
NC Deaths**
960
Currently Hospitalized
659
Completed Tests
468,302

598 Deaths are now Congregate (+13)
79 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (-1)
+21 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

283 Deaths assumed General Population (+9)
677 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+12)

167 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+4)

WRAL is at 963 (+2) and NandO is at 997 deaths

1189 positive cases over 19039 new tests. 6.2% positive rate.

Big case day, massive number of tests. Hospitalizations down (85% reporting vs 88% yesterday). Most of the cases are from Monday, maybe they are getting a little quicker at reporting.

Based on my daily tracking of deaths by date starting 5/7. Three of the death reported today either were not added to the DHHS graph or occurred greater than a month ago. 1 is from 5/21 and the remainder are from within the last week.

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6/5/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases*
33,255
NC Deaths**
966
Currently Hospitalized
717
Completed Tests
482,147

602 Deaths are now Congregate (+4)
78 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (-1)
+6 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

286 Deaths assumed General Population (+3)
680 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+3)

171 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+4)

WRAL is at 1004 (+2) and NandO is at 1006 deaths

1289 positive cases over 13845 new tests. 9.3% positive rate.

More high case day. Maybe this will be the weekend dump early. Still wondering about the 40 gap in deaths. I wonder if there is something to probably vs confirmed cases. Whatever. Will get there eventually.

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6/6/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

34,625
NC Deaths**
992
Currently Hospitalized
708
Completed Tests
497,350

621 Deaths are now Congregate (+19)
79 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+1)
+26 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

292 Deaths assumed General Population (+6)
700 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+20)

176 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+5)

WRAL is at 1032 (+2) and NandO is at 1028 deaths

1370 positive cases over 15203 new tests. 9.0% positive rate.

Biggest day of positive 'reported' cases. Deaths continue to be driven by congregate facilities.

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6/7/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases
35,546
NC Deaths
996
Currently Hospitalized
696 <- only 76% hospitals reporting
Completed Tests
511,226

623 Deaths are now Congregate (+2)
80 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+1)
+4 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

293 Deaths assumed General Population (+1)
703 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+3)

171 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (-5)

WRAL is at 1038 (+2) and NandO is at 1028 deaths

921 positive cases over 13876 new tests.6.6% positive rate.

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6/8/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases
36,484
NC Deaths
1006
Currently Hospitalized
739 <- new high. still only 77% reporting. Need to watch.
Completed Tests
520,113

634 Deaths are now Congregate (+11)
78 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (-2)
+10 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

294 Deaths assumed General Population (+1)
712 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+9)

171 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+0)

WRAL is at 1053 (+2) and NandO is at 1041 deaths

938 positive cases over 8887 new tests. 10.6% positive rate.

5 of the deaths added today to the Death by Date chart at DHHS were from over 2 weeks ago. It did make the single highest fatality date to be 5/25 with 27 deaths.

7 of the additional death added to the daily total today appear to have come out of Chatham County. Looks like they had some paperwork reconciliation.

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6/9/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases
37,160
NC Deaths
1029
Currently Hospitalized
774 <- new high. still only 84% reporting. Expected increase with higher reporting. Stable from ystday
Completed Tests
535,711

647 Deaths are now Congregate (+13)
79 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+1)
+23 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

303 Deaths assumed General Population (+9)
726 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+14)

177 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+6)

WRAL is at 1068 (+2) and NandO is at 1068 deaths

676 positive cases over 15,598 new tests. 4.3% positive rate.

Congregate spread continues.

Side note of the day: NY has stopped reporting deaths in their daily briefing because the number is not "significant anymore" since most of the deaths are things like "covid and heart disease". NY reported 74 COVID deaths yesterday. 3 times NC's worst day, but now their daily deaths don't matter. Has to be nice to kill so many that it doesn't matter anymore.

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6/10/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases
38,171
NC Deaths
1053
Currently Hospitalized
780 <- new high. but higher reporting %. stable
Completed Tests
553,650

661 Deaths are now Congregate (+14)
83 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+4)
+24 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

309 Deaths assumed General Population (+6)
744 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+18)

182 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+5)

WRAL is at 1079 (+2) and NandO is at 1089 deaths

1011 positive cases over 17939 new tests. 5.6% positive rate.

As of yesterday ~36 Congregate Facilities were out of the outbreak stage. They are not included in the active outbreak count.

22 of today's reported death are from June. 1 reported death is from 5/8. 1 reported death is either prior to 5/7 or not reflected on the DHHS graph.

Testing % positive has been trending back down.

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6/11/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases
39,481
NC Deaths
1064
Currently Hospitalized
812 <- new high.
Completed Tests
572,677

666 Deaths are now Congregate (+5)
86 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+3)
+11 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

312 Deaths assumed General Population (+3)
752 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+8)

181 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (-1)

WRAL is at 1108 (+2) and NandO is at 1106 deaths

1310 positive cases over 19027 new tests. 6.9% positive rate.

New high in hospitalizations. WE NEED DAILY CENSUS DATA

Strangest Day on for Day of Deaths. 2 deaths were REMOVED from the total from 6/3 and 6/5. 16 other deaths were added from between 5/28-6/9 which means 1 other death which wasn't previously accounted for on the day of death chart has been added. Odd.

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6/12/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases
41,249
NC Deaths
1092
Currently Hospitalized
760
Completed Tests
595,697

Congregate incomplete due to DHHS not refreshing data.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
689 Deaths are now Congregate (+23)
88 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+2)
+28 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

315 Deaths assumed General Population (+3)
777 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+25)

181 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (0)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WRAL is at 1147 (+2) and NandO is at 1121 deaths

1768 positive cases over 23020 new tests. 7.6% positive rate.

Wow. Cases even higher than I would have thought. Media will have a field day with this Friday data.

Will updated congregate data when site updates.

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6/13/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases
42,676
NC Deaths
1104
Currently Hospitalized
823 <- new high
Completed Tests
611,690

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
698 Deaths are now Congregate (+9)
87 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (-1)
+12 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

319 Deaths assumed General Population (+4)
777 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+8)

181 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (0)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WRAL is at 1153 (+2) and NandO is at 1121 deaths

1427 positive cases over 15,993 new tests. 8.9% positive rate.

Of the deaths added today, 6 were from this past week. 1 was from 6/1, 1 from 5/29, 1 from 5/26, 2 from 5/25, and 1 prior to 5/7 or unaccounted for.

Death totals are MOSTLY complete after 7 days (based on what I have seen in my spreadsheet)

With increased testing, you expect the number of positives to increase, but you'd hope the percentage that are positive would go down. That's not what's happening.

Yesterday, had 56 in hospital in our system, 11 in ICU, 8 on vent

Have had 844 positive tests out of 15, 585 tests performed

27 deaths in hospital were pts from LTC facilities, 29 deaths occurred in their respective nursing homes.

In Atrium as of Thursday: 4875 positives out of 58363 (8.3% and trending up). Roving population testing in underserved areas has 22% positive rate out of 5000 tests, and percent positive continues to increase in this population.. 13.6 % overall positive test rate on Thursday system wide. 131 admitted pts, 44 in ICU, 30 on vents in the system.

Mormad said:

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With increased testing, you expect the number of positives to increase, but you'd hope the percentage that are positive would go down. That's not what's happening.

Yesterday, had 56 in hospital in our system, 11 in ICU, 8 on vent

Have had 844 positive tests out of 15, 585 tests performed

27 deaths in hospital were pts from LTC facilities, 29 deaths occurred in their respective nursing homes.

In Atrium as of Thursday: 4875 positives out of 58363 (8.3% and trending up). Roving population testing in underserved areas has 22% positive rate out of 5000 tests, and percent positive continues to increase in this population.. 13.6 % overall positive test rate on Thursday system wide. 131 admitted pts, 44 in ICU, 30 on vents in the system.

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Definitely want to see that number go down. I contend the trends for the last few weeks have been relatively stable (even if trending up).

The problem is, that the state doesn't clearly admit that what the positive rate they are reporting has changed from a few weeks ago. There was a time when it was only people with symptoms who came in to get tested.

Now they are actively going to hot spots and seeking to find virus and not waiting for it to come to them. Again, NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS. This is a good activity to partake in, but we can't compare our positive rating from before we were doing this, to our positive rating now. Because we are measuring two completely different data sets.

Hot spot testing and finding outbreaks is going to spike your test results. So that has to be understood that it is not a true sample positive rating. Are they going out and doing roving testing/sampling everywhere?

Find the hot spots, help them in every way possible, but you can't pretend in the same breathe that WHAT your testing results mean now can be compared to ANYTHING to collected three weeks ago, and those mean NOTHING compared to your test results 2 months ago when it was only 65 older and sick.

It is concerning. And the numbers you present need to be shouted from the hills instead of the secretary and governor getting up there and saying "I don't know why tests are up, community spread I guess?". Of course they know exactly where and why.

(BTW, love to see the data!!)

EDIT TO ADD: I was calling for them to do population surveys and sampling back in March. It is great that they are getting around to it in JUNE

You've followed these trends much more closely than me, so I'll be interested in your thoughts

I think this roving testing has been occurring on a small scale, at least in meck for a few weeks, but I think fear regarding the availability of testing for future needs has limited it's use from the beginning, with graduated usage over time. It's not like we've haven't WANTED to test as many as possible from the beginning, it just wasn't felt possible.

I have very specific numbers of tests performed, positive results, numbers of tests on roving basis, and admissions. I think, based on that, those that matter can use those numbers to not only extrapolate data, but know specifically how the current positive test uptick compares to previous testing, ie pull out the data on the roving numbers and pull out tests performed on symptomatics and determine if the uptick is "real." It's not like those that matter don't know which tests are done on what subset of pt, and the results of those tests. So I think the data is actually quite comparable and can be deterministic.

Whoever "those that matter" are...

Mormad said:

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You've followed these trends much more closely than me, so I'll be interested in your thoughts

I think this roving testing has been occurring on a small scale, at least in meck for a few weeks, but I think fear regarding the availability of testing for future needs has limited it's use from the beginning, with graduated usage over time. It's not like we've haven't WANTED to test as many as possible from the beginning, it just wasn't felt possible.

I have very specific numbers of tests performed, positive results, numbers of tests on roving basis, and admissions. I think, based on that, those that matter can use those numbers to not only extrapolate data, but know specifically how the current positive test uptick compares to previous testing, ie pull out the data on the roving numbers and pull out tests performed on symptomatics and determine if the uptick is "real." It's not like those that matter don't know which tests are done on what subset of pt, and the results of those tests. So I think the data is actually quite comparable and can be deterministic.

Whoever "those that matter" are...

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Taking just the DAILY reports (knowing they are not perfect). For the last week.
114270 tests
8051 positive cases

That gives you a 7% positive case rate. (DHHS has it closer to 10 but won't completely explain way, but whatever)

Roving Tests:
5000 tests
1100 positive cases

If those tests were done in one week. That is 1100 positive (13.7% of your positives for one week STATEWIDE) coming out of 5000 tests (4.4% of your total TESTS for one week STATEWIDE)

If we want to extend it over two weeks.
207226 tests total statewide
15003 positive cases

Roving is 7.3% of your positives in 2.4% of your total tests

That is how hot spot testing drives your % positive up. And that assumes there is no other hot spot/roving testing being done. Which is highly unlikely.

By including roving/hot spot data in the same pool as your 'symptomatic' or walk-ins, you are clouding what the data tells you. They are both valuable pieces of information, but throwing them in one pot doesn't tell you the true story of what is going on.

And then by not being straightforward with how you are reaching your totals or coming to conclusions, you are misrepresenting the data.

Symptomatic cases and hot spot/roving cases should be two completely different and independent sets of data because they provide two different types of insight into your outbreak.

All this has value, but it the meaning of the data is being misrepresented by not providing the proper context. And that is why we can't compare any of these numbers to the case reports from a few weeks ago when we were just testing symptomatic because they aren't the same thing. This is mostly quick napkin math but it is a great example to why the state needs to provide as much data as possible.

'You' here is DHHS or whoever is keeping this data hidden, of course, not you personally.

I found some data from 5/29. When I can later I'll post it here so you can see the change and offer insight

wilmwolf80 said:

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As suspected, much freaking out on my social media because we recorded the highest number of positive tests in a single day. If the media framed it as being a good thing, which it is because they are doing more testing than ever before, maybe people would understand it better. Or maybe not, most people are stupid. In fact, I think stupidity is a much worse disease than Covid19.

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It was also the highest # of tests in a day. There was a day in May with more, but I suspect that was a "catch up" day, because it was WAY out of line with all the other days at the time.

So when you have 4000 more tests in one day, you THINK there might also be more positives?

From two weeks ago in meck:

Symptomatic: 2950/35712. (8.3)
Roving 553/3215 (17.2)

Asymptomatic

Preprocedural 56/4473 (1.3)
HCW exposed at work 19/347(5.5)
Other exposed at work 22/192(11.5)
Household exposed 20/74(27)
Community exposed 33/146 (23)

There were 105 admitted with 33 in ICU and 20 on vents

Had some IgG testing numbers too

Quick and dirty it looks like HCWs have higher percentage of initial negative tests after exposure, suggesting PPE and hand washing is pretty effective.

Don't know how many in each group become symptomatic and/or test positive later

What do you think about the IgG tests? Are they accurate enough to put any confidence in them? I've read there are a number o different tests with varying accuracy, and that you could come up with a false positive due to having antibodies to a different coronavirus. I'd be disinclined to make any behavioral decisions based on the results.

Mormad said:

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From two weeks ago in meck:

Symptomatic: 2950/35712. (8.3)
Roving 553/3215 (17.2)

Asymptomatic

Preprocedural 56/4473 (1.3)
HCW exposed at work 19/347(5.5)
Other exposed at work 22/192(11.5)
Household exposed 20/74(27)
Community exposed 33/146 (23)

There were 105 admitted with 33 in ICU and 20 on vents

Had some IgG testing numbers too

Quick and dirty it looks like HCWs have higher percentage of initial negative tests after exposure, suggesting PPE and hand washing is pretty effective.

Don't know how many in each group become symptomatic and/or test positive later

---

Thanks so much for posting. Would be really interesting to see trends. The preprocedural is a number I haven't seen anywhere. Cool to see this snapshot and this is exactly what I wish the state could provide.

Appreciate the look.

Thanks for being so diligent in tracking this for all of us. And love the looks at the numbers within the numbers...

The only thing that I've been tracking personally are the daily running averages and here's what they've been doing:

Confirmed Cases as a Percentage of Tests

6/13 (Yesterday) - 6.98%*
6/8 - 7.01% (last time the running average was higher than yesterday)
5/27 - 6.76% (Lowest Data Point since tracking began) - *Still only UP 5.98% from our Lowest Running Average
5/22 - 7.13% (Ending Data Point of a period of steadily ongoing decrease)
4/20 - 8.51% (Highest Data Point since tracking began) - *Still DOWN 17.9% from our Highest Running Average

So yes, numbers have leveled instead of continuing to decrease (Not sure how this gets reported as a spike, but, it is what it is...)

But then, here's what doesn't track with that:


Deaths as a Percentage of Tests

6/13 (Yesterday) - 0.18%*
5/2 - 0.30% (Highest Data Point since tracking began) - *DOWN 40.00% from our Highest Running Average

And these numbers have been - and continue to be - on a steady decline.


Deaths as a Percentage of Confirmed Cases

6/13 (Yesterday) - 2.59%*
5/8 - 3.80% (Highest Data Point since tracking began) - *DOWN 31.84% from our Highest Running Average

And these numbers ALSO have been - and continue to be - on a steady decline.


And in reference to the earlier poster who has to regularly visit Lowes, Home Depot, etc. in varying markets daily as part of his job... I'm in Sales and I've been having interaction with my customers throughout the entire breakout and up until just a couple of weeks ago almost every single conversation started with a brief discussion about COVID-19... I have to wonder why I still haven't talked to anyone that's had anyone that they know personally contract it yet... that's really weird to me... and I think most people are having the same experiences that I have. I'm not even seeing personal connections getting discussed on these boards - or am I missing that somewhere?

Regular conversations aren't starting with the obligatory discussion about COVID anymore... I think that most people have gotten tired of talking about it in general.

Definitely thanks to all who are compiling and analyzing the data for us!

Personal connection - I know one lady who lives in a retirement community who got it early and recovered. She's apparently the only one there who's had it because they haven't had an outbreak, which I understand constitutes two or more.

Appreciate the different lenses people view this information through. And wanted to note what I have seen about deaths. Typically if you see a really high reporting day out of DHHS (>20) these days it includes a good big of aggregated or in the most recent case backlogged data (a bunch of congregate deaths from May).

Taking the data from June that is older than a week (to allow for lag posting), we are getting 13.6 deaths actual day. Even allowing for a +1 for lag reporting, this has been relatively stable and still to a large part is being driven by Congregate deaths (even 3 months into COVID awareness!!!!).

Wake County as of this morning has only reported 2 deaths in the last 2 weeks. Orange County has 1 death in the last 3+. Once Orange mostly cleared those 2 really bad congregate outbreaks their deaths have all but dried up.

The May spike in hospitalizations seems to in part coincide to when they started testing ALL procedural patients and that would seem to give some context to where the additional non-critical patients in the surveillance came from.

Although, there was a one week uptick in ICU COVID patients, that doesn't to me show a greater trend that we aren't stable. Although, I would think the ICU patients tend to linger a long time and can start to build up since there is such a long recovery time. And maybe through better medical care patients are staying in the hospital longer and having eventual better outcomes (leading to increased hospitalization numbers due to longer stays).

I want to get better and we certainly aren't there, but I also don't think we are in some sort of doom spiral.

I don't think things are that appreciably different than a month ago despite continued openings.

If we continue to just take reasonable precautions, we can move forward. Test, trace, and isolate. Identify outbreaks and try and contain them and help affected.

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6/1/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 11:00am)

NC Cases*
29,263
NC Deaths**
898
Currently Hospitalized
650
Completed Tests
421,908

559 Deaths are now Congregate (+7)
72 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+1)
+12 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

267 Deaths assumed General Population (+4)
631 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+8)

162 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+2)

WRAL is at 923 (+2) and NandO is at 944 deaths

674 positive cases over 5619 new tests. 12.0% positive rate.

3 of the deaths reported by DHHS today are over 10 days old. Expect a spike in hospitalizations tomorrow, hospitals have been slack in reporting on the weekends.

---

6/2/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases*
29,889
NC Deaths**
921
Currently Hospitalized
716
Completed Tests
434,921

574 Deaths are now Congregate (+15)
76 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+4)
+23 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

271 Deaths assumed General Population (+4)
650 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+19)

163 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+1)

WRAL is at 933 (+2) and NandO is at 961 deaths

626 positive cases over 13,013 new tests. 4.8% positive rate.

DHHS is now releasing updates at noon instead of 11am. Apparently they need an extra hour to process increased testing data. Tough decisions on what data to release on what day to support narratives.

There is that jump back in hospitalizations I called yesterday now that most of them are reporting again.

5 of the deaths reported today occurred over a week ago. The remaining 17 all fall between 5/27-6/1.

---

6/3/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases*
30,777
NC Deaths**
939
Currently Hospitalized
684
Completed Tests
449,263

585 Deaths are now Congregate (+11)
80 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+4)
+18 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

274 Deaths assumed General Population (+3)
665 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+15)

163 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+0)

WRAL is at 952 (+2) and NandO is at 980 deaths

888 positive cases over 14342 new tests. 6.2% positive rate.

Every day for the last 8 days contains at least 1 death reported in today's total.

26 of the deaths reported by the media but not reported by DHHS are coming from three counties.
Carteret - DHHS 3, NandO 9, County - 3
Robeson - DHHS 14, NandO 26, County - 22
Alamance - DHHS 20, NandO 28, County - 23

Media reporting that unfortunately, NC has had its first death of a minor due to COVID-19 complications.

---

6/4/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases*
31,966
NC Deaths**
960
Currently Hospitalized
659
Completed Tests
468,302

598 Deaths are now Congregate (+13)
79 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (-1)
+21 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

283 Deaths assumed General Population (+9)
677 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+12)

167 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+4)

WRAL is at 963 (+2) and NandO is at 997 deaths

1189 positive cases over 19039 new tests. 6.2% positive rate.

Big case day, massive number of tests. Hospitalizations down (85% reporting vs 88% yesterday). Most of the cases are from Monday, maybe they are getting a little quicker at reporting.

Based on my daily tracking of deaths by date starting 5/7. Three of the death reported today either were not added to the DHHS graph or occurred greater than a month ago. 1 is from 5/21 and the remainder are from within the last week.

---

6/5/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases*
33,255
NC Deaths**
966
Currently Hospitalized
717
Completed Tests
482,147

602 Deaths are now Congregate (+4)
78 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (-1)
+6 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

286 Deaths assumed General Population (+3)
680 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+3)

171 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+4)

WRAL is at 1004 (+2) and NandO is at 1006 deaths

1289 positive cases over 13845 new tests. 9.3% positive rate.

More high case day. Maybe this will be the weekend dump early. Still wondering about the 40 gap in deaths. I wonder if there is something to probably vs confirmed cases. Whatever. Will get there eventually.

---

6/6/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

34,625
NC Deaths**
992
Currently Hospitalized
708
Completed Tests
497,350

621 Deaths are now Congregate (+19)
79 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+1)
+26 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

292 Deaths assumed General Population (+6)
700 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+20)

176 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+5)

WRAL is at 1032 (+2) and NandO is at 1028 deaths

1370 positive cases over 15203 new tests. 9.0% positive rate.

Biggest day of positive 'reported' cases. Deaths continue to be driven by congregate facilities.

---

6/7/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases
35,546
NC Deaths
996
Currently Hospitalized
696 <- only 76% hospitals reporting
Completed Tests
511,226

623 Deaths are now Congregate (+2)
80 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+1)
+4 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

293 Deaths assumed General Population (+1)
703 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+3)

171 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (-5)

WRAL is at 1038 (+2) and NandO is at 1028 deaths

921 positive cases over 13876 new tests.6.6% positive rate.

---

6/8/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases
36,484
NC Deaths
1006
Currently Hospitalized
739 <- new high. still only 77% reporting. Need to watch.
Completed Tests
520,113

634 Deaths are now Congregate (+11)
78 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (-2)
+10 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

294 Deaths assumed General Population (+1)
712 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+9)

171 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+0)

WRAL is at 1053 (+2) and NandO is at 1041 deaths

938 positive cases over 8887 new tests. 10.6% positive rate.

5 of the deaths added today to the Death by Date chart at DHHS were from over 2 weeks ago. It did make the single highest fatality date to be 5/25 with 27 deaths.

7 of the additional death added to the daily total today appear to have come out of Chatham County. Looks like they had some paperwork reconciliation.

---

6/9/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases
37,160
NC Deaths
1029
Currently Hospitalized
774 <- new high. still only 84% reporting. Expected increase with higher reporting. Stable from ystday
Completed Tests
535,711

647 Deaths are now Congregate (+13)
79 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+1)
+23 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

303 Deaths assumed General Population (+9)
726 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+14)

177 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+6)

WRAL is at 1068 (+2) and NandO is at 1068 deaths

676 positive cases over 15,598 new tests. 4.3% positive rate.

Congregate spread continues.

Side note of the day: NY has stopped reporting deaths in their daily briefing because the number is not "significant anymore" since most of the deaths are things like "covid and heart disease". NY reported 74 COVID deaths yesterday. 3 times NC's worst day, but now their daily deaths don't matter. Has to be nice to kill so many that it doesn't matter anymore.

---

6/10/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases
38,171
NC Deaths
1053
Currently Hospitalized
780 <- new high. but higher reporting %. stable
Completed Tests
553,650

661 Deaths are now Congregate (+14)
83 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+4)
+24 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

309 Deaths assumed General Population (+6)
744 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+18)

182 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+5)

WRAL is at 1079 (+2) and NandO is at 1089 deaths

1011 positive cases over 17939 new tests. 5.6% positive rate.

As of yesterday ~36 Congregate Facilities were out of the outbreak stage. They are not included in the active outbreak count.

22 of today's reported death are from June. 1 reported death is from 5/8. 1 reported death is either prior to 5/7 or not reflected on the DHHS graph.

Testing % positive has been trending back down.

---

6/11/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases
39,481
NC Deaths
1064
Currently Hospitalized
812 <- new high.
Completed Tests
572,677

666 Deaths are now Congregate (+5)
86 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+3)
+11 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

312 Deaths assumed General Population (+3)
752 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+8)

181 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (-1)

WRAL is at 1108 (+2) and NandO is at 1106 deaths

1310 positive cases over 19027 new tests. 6.9% positive rate.

New high in hospitalizations. WE NEED DAILY CENSUS DATA

Strangest Day on for Day of Deaths. 2 deaths were REMOVED from the total from 6/3 and 6/5. 16 other deaths were added from between 5/28-6/9 which means 1 other death which wasn't previously accounted for on the day of death chart has been added. Odd.

---

6/12/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases
41,249
NC Deaths
1092
Currently Hospitalized
760
Completed Tests
595,697

Congregate incomplete due to DHHS not refreshing data.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
689 Deaths are now Congregate (+23)
88 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+2)
+28 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

315 Deaths assumed General Population (+3)
777 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+25)

181 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (0)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WRAL is at 1147 (+2) and NandO is at 1121 deaths

1768 positive cases over 23020 new tests. 7.6% positive rate.

Wow. Cases even higher than I would have thought. Media will have a field day with this Friday data.

Will updated congregate data when site updates.

---

6/13/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases
42,676
NC Deaths
1104
Currently Hospitalized
823 <- new high
Completed Tests
611,690

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
698 Deaths are now Congregate (+9)
87 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (-1)
+12 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

319 Deaths assumed General Population (+4)
785 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+8)

181 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (0)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WRAL is at 1153 (+2) and NandO is at 1121 deaths

1427 positive cases over 15,993 new tests. 8.9% positive rate.

Of the deaths added today, 6 were from this past week. 1 was from 6/1, 1 from 5/29, 1 from 5/26, 2 from 5/25, and 1 prior to 5/7 or unaccounted for.

Death totals are MOSTLY complete after 7 days (based on what I have seen in my spreadsheet)

---

6/14/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 12:00pm)

NC Cases
44,119
NC Deaths
1109
Currently Hospitalized
798 <- 76% reporting down from 84%
Completed Tests
627,130

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
700 Deaths are now Congregate (+2)
89 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+2)
+5 Deaths Overall since yesterday.

320 Deaths assumed General Population (+1)
789 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+4)

187 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+6)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WRAL is at 1162 (+2) and NandO is at 1127 deaths

1443 positive cases over 15,440 new tests. 9.3% positive rate.

All 5 deaths reported today are from the last 5 days.

wilmwolf80 said:

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As suspected, much freaking out on my social media because we recorded the highest number of positive tests in a single day. If the media framed it as being a good thing, which it is because they are doing more testing than ever before, maybe people would understand it better. Or maybe not, most people are stupid. In fact, I think stupidity is a much worse disease than Covid19.

---

This.

Also, the "test" is totally unreliable and a joke. Of course if you test more people (with your crappy test, which is designed to show more "positives"), then it is going cause "an increase in confirmed cases".

But it's meaningless. It doesn't mean things are getting "worse".

Ok, so your tests show that more people are "confirmed" to have gotten the cold/flu. Ok? The real thing that is of interest is the seriousness or death rate of this cold/flu. Is it really something to be so concerned about?

The procedural testing is something I had not thought about but does explain (at least somewhat) the increase in hospitalizations... My wife works on a cardio floor where a patient awaiting an open heart surgery was tested... Completely asymptomatic, but came back positive... Now he's in a bed in the hospital until he can test negative and have his procedure... Would have never been admitted, or even tested, had he not been there for the surgery...

Wayland said:

---

Appreciate the different lenses people view this information through. And wanted to note what I have seen about deaths. Typically if you see a really high reporting day out of DHHS (>20) these days it includes a good big of aggregated or in the most recent case backlogged data (a bunch of congregate deaths from May).

Taking the data from June that is older than a week (to allow for lag posting), we are getting 13.6 deaths actual day. Even allowing for a +1 for lag reporting, this has been relatively stable and still to a large part is being driven by Congregate deaths (even 3 months into COVID awareness!!!!).

Wake County as of this morning has only reported 2 deaths in the last 2 weeks. Orange County has 1 death in the last 3+. Once Orange mostly cleared those 2 really bad congregate outbreaks their deaths have all but dried up.

The May spike in hospitalizations seems to in part coincide to when they started testing ALL procedural patients and that would seem to give some context to where the additional non-critical patients in the surveillance came from.

Although, there was a one week uptick in ICU COVID patients, that doesn't to me show a greater trend that we aren't stable. Although, I would think the ICU patients tend to linger a long time and can start to build up since there is such a long recovery time. And maybe through better medical care patients are staying in the hospital longer and having eventual better outcomes (leading to increased hospitalization numbers due to longer stays).

I want to get better and we certainly aren't there, but I also don't think we are in some sort of doom spiral.

I don't think things are that appreciably different than a month ago despite continued openings.

If we continue to just take reasonable precautions, we can move forward. Test, trace, and isolate. Identify outbreaks and try and contain them and help affected.

---

I just posted the following in response to a question on Twitter, asking how many patients are in ICU:

"NCDHHS does not report this information on the Dashboard, but another hospital organization reports the data every few days. On 6/11, they reported 301 ICU patients out of 812 total Covid patients (same total NCDHHS reported). On this date, they also reported 415 empty ICU beds."

I logged on Twitter today, after returning home from a busy weekend and saw the following headline from WRAL's Twitter account.

"Just In: Hospital beds continue to fill up in NC with COVID-19 patients, nearly 800 more people were hospitalized"

As you can imagine, other's came back at them for their misleading Tweet (I highlighted the misleading word in the tweet). WRAL has now tweeted out a correction, but their original, misleading Tweet is still up. I have been away from Twitter for the past few days (busy moving my son back to college) and it has been wonderful. Social media can be exhausting and is not somewhere I plan to spend a lot of time in the future.

JasonNCSU said:

---

The procedural testing is something I had not thought about but does explain (at least somewhat) the increase in hospitalizations... My wife works on a cardio floor where a patient awaiting an open heart surgery was tested... Completely asymptomatic, but came back positive... Now he's in a bed in the hospital until he can test negative and have his procedure... Would have never been admitted, or even tested, had he not been there for the surgery...

---

That's interesting. Must have been because of the type of surgery (cardiac), because everyone else awaiting surgery who tests positive is sent to the crib. I highly doubt this helps explain the increased admits, except in rare circumstances.

Mormad said:

---

JasonNCSU said:

---

The procedural testing is something I had not thought about but does explain (at least somewhat) the increase in hospitalizations... My wife works on a cardio floor where a patient awaiting an open heart surgery was tested... Completely asymptomatic, but came back positive... Now he's in a bed in the hospital until he can test negative and have his procedure... Would have never been admitted, or even tested, had he not been there for the surgery...

---

That's interesting. Must have been because of the type of surgery (cardiac), because everyone else awaiting surgery who tests positive is sent to the crib. I highly doubt this helps explain the increased admits, except in rare circumstances.

---

So this jump in cases in three hospital groups (Meck, Triad, Duke), which aligns to the late May surveillance showing a doubling of non-critical cases is all organic and no part a change in 'accounting' practices?


5/20 # of COVID


5/25 # of COVID

acslater1344 said:

---

Well folks, I've got another IPS case study for everyone.

My gf is a bartender, so I've somewhat expected both of us to get it at some point just given her close proximity inside to so many people. They have a lot of drunken regulars who couldn't care less about COVID-19 so it seemed kind of inevitable. We've both youngish (late 20s/early 30s) with healthy immune systems so I wasn't super concerned.

Sure enough, after 5-10 phase 2 shifts, she started having really bad headaches early last week before coming down with the cough/fever combo which was seemed pretty damn rough Wednesday and Thursday nights (she felt a lot better during the day Thursday before it came back around that night). We got her tested Thursday morning and kept our distance from one another, wore masks in the house, etc. but I figured that was all in vain.
She woke up Friday feeling MUCH better but suddenly couldn't smell/taste anything which is still happening as of yesterday.


I was starting to think I was going to be another asymptomatic carrier the first few days, but then a fever hit me like a ton of bricks Friday night (no cough though). It was pretty intense... went from feeling totally fine to terrible in the matter of 5 minutes. HOWEVER, my body was able to break the fever over night... woke up in a literal pool of sweat but I've felt fine since other than some mild headaches/body aches.

Her test came back positive yesterday morning, mine is still pending but surely it will come back positive.

Sorry for the long post, but it's one of those things that's weird to talk about, and I feel a lot more comfortable sharing with this group in a semi-anonymous format. Yall stay safe out there. Mask up!

---

Damn dude, sorry to hear it. Glad to hear the really bad stretch may have been pretty short although I'm sure that was no consolation Friday night as you were thrashing around fighting off fever-induced visions of ol' Mack stomping on our midfield logo while flashing his fiendish grin and giving Dave the double bird.

Upside is you may be IPS-famous now though, are you the first likely confirmed case on IPS?!?

Glad to hear you're both feeling better, and hope that yours comes back positive and you'll have gotten past it and gotten some antibodies out of all this

acslater1344 said:

---

Well folks, I've got another IPS case study for everyone.

My gf is a bartender, so I've somewhat expected both of us to get it at some point just given her close proximity inside to so many people. They have a lot of drunken regulars who couldn't care less about COVID-19 so it seemed kind of inevitable. We've both youngish (late 20s/early 30s) with healthy immune systems so I wasn't super concerned.

Sure enough, after 5-10 phase 2 shifts, she started having really bad headaches early last week before coming down with the cough/fever combo which was seemed pretty damn rough Wednesday and Thursday nights (she felt a lot better during the day Thursday before it came back around that night). We got her tested Thursday morning and kept our distance from one another, wore masks in the house, etc. but I figured that was all in vain.
She woke up Friday feeling MUCH better but suddenly couldn't smell/taste anything which is still happening as of yesterday.


I was starting to think I was going to be another asymptomatic carrier the first few days, but then a fever hit me like a ton of bricks Friday night (no cough though). It was pretty intense... went from feeling totally fine to terrible in the matter of 5 minutes. HOWEVER, my body was able to break the fever over night... woke up in a literal pool of sweat but I've felt fine since other than some mild headaches/body aches.

Her test came back positive yesterday morning, mine is still pending but surely it will come back positive.

Sorry for the long post, but it's one of those things that's weird to talk about, and I feel a lot more comfortable sharing with this group in a semi-anonymous format. Yall stay safe out there. Mask up!

---

Sorry to hear you guys got sick. Very glad to hear though you are feeling better and didn't have to battle it for too long. From what you're describing it seems it affected you guys very similarly to an influenza strain.

Definitely sucks, hope things improve for you guys quickly. Are you guys in NC?

Always good to get actual real life insight to make this about more than just numbers.