COVID-19 progress reflected in map
Mar. 22—The improvement in North Carolina's COVID-19 numbers has been slowing, but they have improved enough that only a single county in central North Carolina is colored red in the state map in the COVID-19 County Alert System.
A total of 82 of the 100 counties have dropped to the least alarming category, color-coded yellow, of "significant" spread of the COVID-19 virus, while 17 still have "substantial" spread, colored orange.
When the alert system was updated two weeks earlier, 60 counties were yellow and 34 were orange.
Catawba and Alexander were still orange in the update two weeks ago but now are yellow after the alert system's update late last week.
The only county near Caldwell that remains orange in the most recent update is Avery County.
Two weeks ago six counties still were colored red, with "critical" levels of viral spread, but now the only one still in that dangerous territory is Randolph County, which is just south of Greensboro.
The two-week update of the color-coded map is a more stark snapshot of the state's COVID-19 numbers than the daily updates provided on the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services' COVID-19 Dashboard, but the dashboard better illustrates trends.
Those trends show continued improvement, but the improvement may be beginning to level off.
The number of active cases remains similar to the levels of last summer, and the seven-day average number of new cases per day actually has increased since early March, going back above 2,000 late last week.
The number of people requiring hospital treatment dropped to 964 on Friday, but the daily improvement seen in recent weeks has slowed noticeably over the past two weeks.
The one statistic continuing to show dramatic improvement is deaths, down to fewer than 10 a day statewide, reflecting the benefit of COVID-19 vaccination of the most vulnerable populations.
