Caldwell recedes from COVID-19 crisis
Mar. 5—The recent steady decline of COVID-19 in North Carolina from its post-holiday spike is starkly illustrated by the color shift in this week's update of the COVID-19 County Alert System.
Nearly two-thirds of the state's counties — 60 out of 100, including Caldwell and Burke — now show in the alert system's map as yellow, indicating significant spread of the virus, and only six show as red, with critical levels of viral spread. The remaining 34 — including Catawba and Alexander — are orange, the middle tier with substantial spread.
That is a far cry from the peak of the virus in early January, when 84 counties were red, 12 were orange and just four were yellow.
Six also is the fewest number of red counties since the alert system started in mid-November, when there were 10.
Caldwell County once had among the highest rates of infection in the state, and its rate reported Feb. 14-27 in the current report remains high — 327.3 per 100,000 people. That rate would be high enough for Caldwell to still be colored red in the map if not for other factors.
But just 6.6% of all new COVID-19 tests during that period were positive — health officials have long said that their goal is to see that number drop below 5% — and the virus recently is having a "low impact" on Caldwell Memorial Hospital, according to the report.
Rebecca Smith, vice president and chief operating officer of Caldwell UNC Health Care, said that the decline in cases has been a tremendous relief to hospital staff.
On Friday, there were six patients at Caldwell Memorial Hospital with COVID-19, and earlier in the week there were as little as four, the lowest number of inpatient hospitalizations for the disease since July.
"I certainly don't think it's over. But oh my goodness, yeah, what a relief it is to have such a pretty ... rapid trajectory downward, you know," she said. I mean, if you look back at ... January, we were up to 49 inpatient COVID-positive patients."
She said that the continuing effort to get people vaccinated against COVID-19 has been part of the solution.
On Friday, Caldwell UNC Health Care had administered 15,313 doses of the vaccine. Of that number, 8,728 people have received their first dose and 6,585 have received their second.
Smith said that social distancing and mask wearing have also helped, and she thinks that many in the community are immune to COVID-19 because they already contracted the virus.
"We're past Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's holidays ... so all of that I think together has worked towards this precipitous drop in our COVID-positive community numbers," she said.
Despite the drop in case numbers, it is still important to take precautions, she said. People should continue wearing masks, washing their hands often, social distancing and avoiding spending time with people in small, enclosed spaces or large gatherings.
"We should just be really cautious with that and take all that we've learned about this virus and implement those learnings into our daily practice ... that's what I would advise," she said. "And get vaccinated. You know, as soon as you can."
