State health department announces changes for tracking COVID data in NC. What’s new

Chyna Blackmon
·2 min read
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New changes are coming to how North Carolina tracks and displays COVID data ahead of the federal public health emergency ending in May.

Last week, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services announced the next steps for the COVID-19 dashboard and that the remaining community testing sites have been closed.

“While we continue to see illness and deaths from COVID-19, it is no longer the threat it once was thanks to testing, vaccines and treatment,” Dr. Susan Kansagra, NCDHHS division of public health director, said in a statement. “As we evolve our response to the more routine nature of COVID-19 going forward, these indicators will help us monitor our health care capacity from respiratory illness including COVID-19 and adjust our response if needed.”

Going forward, COVID data and cases will be incorporated with other respiratory illness data for the North Carolina Respiratory Illness Summary Dashboard. Those metrics show data related to COVID, influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, and other respiratory illnesses.

COVID vaccine data will be updated monthly until May 31 and then be made available on the CDC website. You’ll still be able to look at data on COVID cases, deaths and proportions of variants through the state’s Respiratory Illness Dashboard.

NCDHHS is also transitioning back to routine immunization reporting. COVID vaccine records will be available online until June 1. After that, patients will have to get vaccine records from providers, pharmacies, or local health departments.

President Joe Biden announced in February that national COVID emergency and public health emergency declarations would formally end on May 11, the Associated Press reported. Doing so would restructure the federal coronavirus response to treat the virus as an endemic threat to public health that can be managed through agencies’ normal authorities.

How to get tested for COVID

NCDHHS has closed its community testing sites, but there are multiple ways to get free home test kits:

  • Project ACT offers free, rapid test kits to eligible communities while supplies last.

  • The Biden administration’s federal program for free at-home test kits allows households to order a set of four tests through the United States Postal Service.

  • Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and Concentric by Gingko are partnering with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to provide five free test kits that can be ordered every 30 days through July. To sign-up, people can log on to www.concentricbyginkgo.com/north-carolina-ship-to-home-login/ and enter the access code “CMS!181”. Those with questions are encouraged to contact one of the participating CMS schools for more information.