NC health officials say 309 in region have died of COVID

Jan. 3—HENDERSON — COVID-19 has claimed 309 lives across the Tri-County since the start of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services says.

As of the end of 2022, there had been 132 deaths reported in Vance County because of the coronavirus, 126 in Granville County and 51 in Warren County.

Case counts for the last two weeks of the year remain incomplete, so those numbers could change.

But the most recent COVID-related death in Vance County was reported in mid-October. Granville County's most recent death was reported in mid-November and Warren County's most recent was reported in late September.

The U.S. Centers for Disease says all three counties are experiencing "medium" levels of COVID-19, based on the number of hospital admissions related to the virus.

As of Dec. 29, seven Vance County residents had been admitted to a hospital because of COVID in the past week, along with nine residents of Granville County and three of Warren County. Adjusted for population, they're all sending residents to the hospital at about the same rate, a little more than 1.5 admissions a week for every 10,000 residents.

To the north, across the state line in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, the admissions rate was slightly higher, about 1.8 for every 10,000 residents. Mecklenburg is part of a cluster of five contiguous southern Virginia counties the CDC says have high community levels of the virus, to the point people should be masking up when they're in indoor public spaces.

The facility with the largest and most persistent outbreaks since the start of the pandemic, the Butner federal prison, as of Dec. 30 had active cases of COVID-19 affecting three inmates and 16 staff members.

Since the start of the pandemic, 39 prisoners and two members of the Butner prison staff have died from COVID. The most recently reported death, of prisoner David Hinkson, was reported in September but actually occurred on Feb. 4, 2022.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons offered no explanation for the delay in reporting.

Hinkson, who was 65, tested positive for COVID on Jan. 24, 2022, in Butner's prison hospital, and was sent to an off-campus hospital three days later.

As with most of the other Butner prisoners who died from the virus, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said he had long-term health problems the CDC considers risk factors for a severe case of the infection.

Hinkson had been serving a 43-year prison after being convicted in the early 2000s of tax evasion and of trying to hire a hitman to kill the judge, prosecutor and IRS investigator who handled his tax case.

The case was notorious in Idaho and the Northwest in part because Hinkson, a businessman who owned a water-bottling company, had "ties to the militia movement," the Spokane, Washington, Spokesman-Review reported in 2005.

Like many other federal prisoners, he went to court in 2020 to ask for "compassionate release" to lower his chances of being exposed to COVID-19. But the judge who sentenced him to prison, Richard Tallman, rejected the request that July.

Tallman said Hinkson was "an intelligent man who believes that he is above the law, holds a very skewed view of his legal obligations, is unwilling to conform his behavior to lawful requirements, and steadfastly refuses to take responsibility for his actions."

His appeals over the years included "bizarre allegations that he is being held as a 'political prisoner' or that he enjoys some form of 'diplomatic immunity' as being an ambassador for a Canadian First Nations tribe," the judge said.

To Tallman, the pandemic didn't outweigh Hinkson's history because the Indiana prison he was then housed in had "reported very low numbers of infections to date," and his medical records didn't show "that he suffers from any of the serious underlying medical conditions" that are known risk factors for a severe case of COVID-19.

An obituary for Hinkson published by the Ouray County, Colorado Plaindealer on Feb. 24, 2022, said Hinkson had died of cancer in Duke University Hospital. Another paper, the Idaho County Free Press, on Jan. 19, 2022, published a letter from one of Hinkson's supporters, Carol Asher of Kamiah, Idaho, that said he had been "diagnosed as terminally ill in early 2020."

Contact Ray Gronberg at rgronberg@hendersondispatch.com or by phone at 252-436-2850.