As North Carolina and Surry County businesses continue to reopen under Gov. Roy Cooper’s phased plan, local and state cases of COVID-19 continue to climb.
In Surry County, confirmed cases of the viral sickness have crossed into three-figure territory, with 109 confirmed cases listed as of Thursday morning, with one death.
Neighboring counties in both North Carolina and Virginia have continued climbing as well. In Wilkes County, where an outbreak at a Tyson Foods processing center has infected 570 employees, the total county figure stands at 456.
The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services counts the figures in a person’s home county, not where a patient has contracted the virus. Many of the Tyson workers come from neighboring communities, thus the plant’s figures are higher than Wilkes County’s totals.
Several dozen of those Tyson workers are reflected in the Forsyth County figures, where 801 individuals have contracted the virus, with seven dying. The state health department website shows just one death in Wilkes County, though the Associated Press is reporting two.
Figures from other counties contiguous to Surry County include 124 cases in Yadkin County with one death, 42 cases in Stokes County and 12 in Alleghany County, with no fatalities in those two locations.
Across the border in Virginia, Carroll County is showing 64 with one death, Galax has 82 cases, Grayson County has 22 cases, and Patrick County has a dozen cases.
Statewide in North Carolina, there were 20,860 confirmed cases with 716 deaths as of 11:15 a.m. Thursday, while Virginia showed 34,137 cases and 1,099 deaths. Across the United States, there have been more than 1.5 million confirmed cases — including 22,860 added to those figures in the 24 hours ending when the CDC website was updated Thursday morning — with 93,061 deaths.
While Surry County has conducted two mass testings over the past two weeks, Maggie Simmons, assistant health director at the Surry County Health and Nutrition Center, said Thursday afternoon most of the new cases have not come from those tests.
“We have had several positive results from mass testing; however, I would say that the biggest part of the increase is a result of community transmission. … People aren’t following social distancing and cloth face covering recommendations to the extent they should.”
The same is happening in neighboring localities. In Galax, Virginia, for instance, the city’s 82 cases gives it one of the highest infection rates of all localities in both North Carolina and Virginia. Health officials there have said the cases were primarily two or three “large” families spreading it among themselves, then going out and interacting with the public without proper precautions.
Simmons said she and her colleagues at Surry County Health and Nutrition have a simple message for local residents: “Follow the 3 Ws: wear, wait and wash.”
She and others there at the department have explained that means people should wear a mask, should wait at least 6 feet apart from others while in lines, shopping, or otherwise in public, and they should wash their hands often with soap and water or hand sanitizer.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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