Three years into the pandemic, the state begins to wind down some of its COVID efforts

Teddy Rosenbluth
·2 min read
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After nearly three years of living with COVID-19, North Carolina is easing back on its COVID-19 efforts.

Last week, the NC Department of Health and Human Services announced several ways in which it would take a step back from its COVID-19 efforts, instead integrating them with the rest of the agency’s public health and health care responsibilities.

On Saturday, the state closed its remaining community COVID testing sites.

This month, DHHS will stop tracking and posting data points like the number of outbreaks in congregate living settings and hospitalizations and deaths by vaccination status.

Starting in June, COVID-19 immunization records will only be available via normal avenues, like pharmacies and health care providers, rather than its own online portal.

“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,” said Dr. Susan Kansagra, director of the division of public health.

This announcement coincides with relatively good COVID news in North Carolina.

Hospital admissions for COVID-19 in North Carolina have dramatically fallen since the peak in early January. Emergency department visits for COVID-19 have similarly declined. Every single county in North Carolina is considered low-risk by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s map.

XBB, as predicted, has become the overwhelmingly dominant COVID strain in North Carolina. In the southeast, the XBB variants make up more than 92% of all COVID-19 cases.

Dr. Cameron Wolfe, a Duke infectious disease expert, breaks down what you need to know about the now dominant strain of COVID-19:

  • The XBB subvariants are better at evading natural immunity from prior COVID infections and vaccine-generated immunity than were previous variants. That means those who have had COVID-19 before — even recently— could be vulnerable to reinfections, Wolfe said.

  • The subvariants appear to have a mutation that makes them more infectious than prior variants, Wolfe said.

  • Like the BQ variants, these variants are more resistant to monoclonal therapies, which doctors prescribe to immunocompromised patients to avoid infection and to COVID-positive patients who are at a higher risk of developing complications from the virus.

  • Doctors still have many antiviral medications that work well against the new variants, like Paxlovid, Remdesivir and Molnupiravir, Wolfe said.

  • The XBB variants do not appear to cause more severe illness than previously dominant variants, Wolfe said.

Teddy Rosenbluth covers science and health care for The News & Observer in a position funded by Duke Health and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.