WITN interrupts regular programming for this Corona virus update. Good afternoon I'm Mandy Cohen, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human, and I'm joined by Director Mike Burberry and we have matching face coverings today that have North Carolina on it that we wanted to share with you Nicole Foxx and Brian Tifton are our American sign language interpreters and working behind the scenes are Spanish translators Jackie and Jasmine Mitte. So I'll start with the rundown of the numbers. As of this morning there were. 19700 Laboratory from confirmed cases 580 - Five people are currently hospitalized and sadly there have now been 691 deaths with Avery County now reporting its first case of Covid- 19. We have lab confirmed cases in all 100 counties of North Carolina. It's another reminder that as we look forward to moving to phase two, we have to practice new habits. You're gonna hear me say every day practice your three WS where wait wash wear a face covering wait six feet apart and wash your hands often no matter where you are in North Carolina May is also Older Americans Month a time to recognize the important contributions of older adults across our state. Our seniors make countless contributions to our communities and we recognize the experiences and sacrifices they've made to strengthen and enrich our lives our workforce our families They. Neighbors we're supporting older adults in North Carolina in many ways during this pandemic to protect the safety of our seniors. We're providing home delivered or grab and go meals instead of congregate meals our area agencies on aging adult day and health programs are continuing to provide services, but do it virtually we've been partnering with universities to send students to help make wellness checks on our seniors and also have a Grant to combat social isolation by providing technology and training on how to use that new equipment. We also have a team dedicated to supporting our long-term care facilities as they protect our aging family members and loved ones who require around-the-clock care and and the staff who care for them. We are sending all long-term care facilities in the state PE packets of needed supplies and we are increasing rates for some Medicaid services to support infection, prevention and management. We also provided a toolkit and virtual training to support long-term care facilities and preparing for and responding to covid- 19 outbreaks in their facility. Another way we can honor them is to do our part to protect our older loved ones, friends and neighbors who are at higher risk for severe illness from Covid- 19 when we wear a. Covering and we wait six feet apart, we're showing we care about those around us. people can have covid- 19 and not have any symptoms if we don't practice the three w's wear weight and wash we can unknowingly expose people to the virus. We all need to do our part to look out for those in our community who are at higher risk. I've seen lots of social media posts about people picking up groceries for a neighbor or calling a friend or relative just to check in, please continue to. Care of yourself and those around you and remember where weight and wash with that. I'll turn it over to director Mike's Bradbury. Thank you, Madam Secretary and good afternoon. I want to start today with an update on severe weather in North Carolina. We continue to monitor the situation in our coastal counties and any lingering impacts from tropical storm Arthur as of this morning, portions of 12, and several secondary roads continued to be impact. By standing water, All major interstates and highways are open at this time. We're also monitoring storm systems that will impact our state over the next few days with heavy rainfall. Some of our Western counties could see several inches of rain before Friday. The National Weather Service has parts of Western North Carolina under a moderate potential for flash flooding today and tonight that risk extends into the piedmont tomorrow. Heaviest rains are. Tonight and tomorrow morning and flooding is possible along the Catawba Yadkin, new and Dan Rivers. We're in close contact with our local partners as they evaluate potential impacts to their communities and we placed two type three swift water rescue teams on alert should they be needed in Western North Carolina, Everyone especially those living along rivers and streams should be alert to the possibility of flooding and landslides and should have a way to. Weather alerts like a Noah Weather radio or a weather app on your smartphone. You can also monitor River and stream levels and get flood alerts from our flood inundation mapping and alert network. We call it Fineman and the website is fineman NC dot NC dot Gov. That's F I M A N dot NC dot Gov today is day 71 of the state Emergency operations centers covid- 19 response. We're continuing to. Personal protective gear to long-term care facilities across the state, nursing homes and other types of care facilities are picking up supplies in Greensboro today and more facilities will pick up tomorrow and Friday in Mecklenburg County more than 3000 licensed long-term care homes across the state are receiving a two -week supply of protective equipment, and many of them tell us they're very glad to receive it. I want to acknowledge. The partnership and work that went into this project with our fantastic partners at the Office of Emergency Medical Services and other DHS Partners, the North Carolina National Guard and our state and local emergency management partners from our warehouses teams delivered supplies to 59 counties and two health care preparedness coalitions yesterday. That's an ongoing mission. shipments included isolation gowns gloves. Face Shields multiple types of masks goggles, thermometers and hand sanitizer we received around 70000 gallons yesterday at our current request rate of 9700 gallons per day. This is around the seven day supply. We're continuing efforts to procure gowns and other types of PE PE and we are working with the private sector to manufacture PE right here in North Carolina. Secretary Cohen mentioned this is Older Americans Month, so remember that one of the best ways you can look out for and protect the older folks in your life is by observing the three W's where a cloth face covering wait at least six feet apart and wash your hands. often that's where weight wash follow Secretary's guidance. We also wanna thank our. Partners For all the great work, they've been doing to keep their community safe and as always don't forget to look out for your family, friends and neighbors Call your loved ones daily guaranteed. They'll appreciate it with kindness and cooperation. We will all get through this together as one team, one mission and one family. Thank you very much and now back to Secretary Cohen for questions and answers great. Thank you, Director Sprayberry and now open for your questions. Looks like our first question from Stephanie WLOS TV Asheville. Yes, hi, Doctor Cohen and this is Stephanie Sandi yesterday at four PM. We all received the number of patients presumed to be recovered. My question for you is how are you all classifying who is recovered and what criteria must be met for a person to fall into this category. Thanks Stephanie Yes, we are updating our recovery numbers once per week, so we updated those yesterday afternoon again. The recovery numbers are an estimate. we explain how we get to that estimate on on the. But let me walk you through it first for folks who are not hospitalized, We make an assumption from the time in which you your test comes back from the time. your sample is collected for 14 days. we assume that you are recovered at the end of those 14 days. If you need to be hospitalized, we make an assumption that it's a recovery takes 28 days again. These are estimates some people may take longer to recover. others may be sooner and. Of recovery but that's the best estimate that we we can make at this point and we know I think that number now is up at 11000 in terms of of recovery. we know that folks are recovering every day from Covid- 19. We wanted to give folks a sense of that estimate. I will note that CDC has not put out any official guidance on how we should be calculating that estimate so this is our best attempt at doing that if the CDC does change the way in which they are estimating. Then we may need to change our estimates as well but we're trying to give folks a sense once a week about how our recovery numbers look here in North Carolina as an estimate. Thank you. Our next question is from Julie Havelock with the Carolina Journal. Hi and thank you so much I wanted to ask if you are planning to go back to in person briefings anytime soon. Hi Julie. Thanks for that question. you know we are looking at all of the things across the board related to risk and as we are thinking about easing into phase two, what that would mean we want to make sure that we no matter what we're doing. We're gonna continue to tell businesses to be telework where we're wherever possible and given the nature that we can create a scenario where we can continue to social distance as continue to be transparent, take questions. Single day I imagine we're gonna continue with distance briefings at least for the time being but we'll we'll let you know if that changes again we we wanna create the most safe environments that we can for folks to say the lowest risk environments for folks so if we can continue to do that at a at a distance, we will continue to do that. obviously we'll continue to watch our numbers and our trends and make adjustments as we go forward. Next question is from Corey Johnsons CTI News Channel 12. Hi, Doctor Cohen my name is Cory Johnson. My question is regarding hair salons the hair is essential Association is planning to file a lawsuit alleging that they've been prevented from pursuing their vocations during this time. Why have other businesses been allowed to reopen and have hair salons been discriminated against in this way? Thanks Cory for that question. So, as you know, we initially limited a number of businesses particularly ones that we felt like we're incredibly high risk as you know this fire. Is transmitted when people come into close contact with each other over a prolonged period of time. That means usually within six feet for more than 10 minutes of time. and if you think of when you get your hair done right, there is literally you are right on top of someone when you're doing that and it is over a period of time, so it's one of the higher risk scenarios both for patrons and for the employees and the other tricky part about this virus that we keep talking about is that folks. Have Covid- 19, and they don't know it that is why an important component of as we think about easing restrictions. We want people to wait six feet apart, want them to wash their hands, but we also want them to wear a face covering now in a salon situation, you can't be six feet apart. You just can't deliver those services and be cutting someone's hair of six feet away. That's why these other measures as we think about using restrictions are gonna be so important for folks to follow to be able to wear a face covering to be. To be washing down surfaces and and such as we go forward, it's gonna be really important. We don't want folks to be getting sick and potentially dying from this so we want to be protecting people's public protecting the public's health as much as possible here so we think we've made some decisions in order to do that. As we look at our numbers, we see them remain stable. that we believe we can move forward to easing restrictions and salons would. Part of those easing of restrictions just at the end of this week. so I'd say hey hang in there. We're gonna keep watching our numbers. right now we see it largely be stable. They're not perfect, but they are largely stable in terms of their ability to respond to this virus. in order for us to see that we have the testing that we want to have so those are good. That's good news and so, as we've said, as we move into phase two which we hope to do at the end of this. Salons would be part of that, but they're going to be additional restrictions on that to keep the of the salon to be as safe as possible. Our next question is from Steve Weisman with the Raleigh Ander. Hey, Doctor Cohen Steve Watson at the news and observer, I want to ask you about the the is DHS collected aggregate contact tracing data from around the state determined patterns hot spots really useful information and we'll be sharing that information. Steve thanks for that. so as you know we already are required to collect some information about where there might be hot spots, We are required to have labs report as positive cases from wherever that lab is so that's how we get our positive lab reports in addition, There are certain types of community that certain types of sectors that are required to report to us whether or not they are seeing an outbreak some of those sectors are for example, our congregate living settings folks like nursing homes or congregate living shelters of of various types. They are required to report that they report that to their local health Department who in turn, then reports that to the state We Ari. That information and then we post that on our website, there are a few other industries that also are required to report like a child care or a or a school setting but they're they're an isolated number of those sectors that are required to report to us when they see those outbreaks so we are posting already the congregate living settings and what we are able to do is show down to a zip code level. Where are the positive cases coming when the lab reports. To us, so we feel like that's a lot of information that we're able to give folks in terms of pinpointing around the state. where do we see the highest number of cases, so we're able to say at the zip code level. the positive lab reports that come in. we're able to see also then to to cluster those at certain types of facilities like I said, like congregate living facilities that are required to report to us. Thank you. The next question is from Michael Valero with WFAA EU. You've had a doctor Cohen, This is Michael Fuller with W F A E question for you about hospitalization numbers. that 58 five is the highest level since April fifteenth at least what does this mean as a trend for starting phase two this week? Michael Great question about hospitalizations as you know hospitalizations, one of four trends that we look at as well as two to three capacities that we also look at yes, you are right. We saw a hospitalizations tick between yesterday today. Still, you know, I'll say. Hospitalizations because we do have a lot of hospital capacity, you know we're trying to look at that in the context of is our health system able to handle the number of cases and the answer is overwhelmingly yes. So, in addition to hospitalizations, we do give a sense of how many other empty beds are there and we know we have capacity in our hospitals. So yes, we are watching that very closely. I wanna see what tomorrow the rest of the week brings us in terms of that number when I but when I look overall we've. Been stable, we've been in the five hundreds generally with that number, we do have a slight dip over the weekend. We think that's more reporting issue than anything else, but so we've largely been in the 500. So yeah we might be at the higher end of the five hundreds today. Not sure what tomorrow will bring, but I think the overall message is stability there and our system able to have the capacity to handle additional infections should they come our way and again. Hospitalization is one of four trends. We look at no one of these trends alone can really give us a picture. I'd also say that hospitalizations tends to be a lagging indicator so very much to me, says is this telling me something about something that happened last week that we need to be aware of so again. Each of the indicators has it's own limitations has it's own way of of having the data to come to us, which isn't always perfect. So that's why we need to look at the. Picture, but we are very much watching that flight uptick in hospitalizations, but I would characterize that's still overall stable given the high amount of capacity that we do have in our hospital systems at this point. Thank you. is from Gary Robertson with The Associated Press. Hi, it's Gary Robertson with a P dot Cohen I we have talked a little bit about about contract tracing and last week. I guess there was some question about South Carolina and then announcing that they were gonna have well over A thousand contract tracing workers and I know that in recent weeks, we said that we had hoped to double the number in our state but that seems to be smaller compared to what's South Carolina's doing. Am I missing something on the numbers or is it the quality of racing that leads you to believe that you're still very confident in our numbers or our in the work that's being done in that area. Gary Thanks for the question. as you know, we think that contact tracing in coordination with the increased testing is one of our foundational ways in which we are going to be able to keep viral spread low and the reason for that is when someone tests positive, We want to contact Tracer to out to them find out who their contacts were. Those contacts who got exposed do get testing and then you go from there, maybe their contacts got exposed if there's a positive test and go from there and it allows you to more quickly isolate people who might have Cove in 19, tell them to stay home until they are recovered and so that's why this is so important. Now we are lucky in North Carolina. we've had have our local health departments have been doing contact tracing since the beginning of this And frankly, for for decades that this is what they do now the scale at which they need to do their job is quite different. as we think about going forward and needing to keep the virus level low so we already had about 250 people already deployed and we are able to what we have done is also ask our local health Department are there other employees that you already have that could also get retrained and get. Deployed should we need it? So, in addition to the 250, we're working right now to even bring up more of them. so we don't have to hire more new. This is just Red deploying currently the current folks at the local health departments. I don't have a number yet on how many we are planning to train, but I know it's a sizable number and then we want to also go and hire the additional contact tracing folks to be able to deploy the important part for us about contact tracing is also having folks from the communities and also who speak the language that folks are going to need to do so we've definitely put in. Emphasis on our new hires to make sure we have both English and Spanish so that we can be doing appropriate. contact Tracings in all of the communities here in North Carolina so that we do wanna be focused on that in our hiring has been specifically focused on making sure we're having folks come from the communities in which they're gonna be calling right because there is a trust issue here and we want folks to know these are trusted public health officials that will be calling. Asking folks questions so we're really working hard to make sure that we are implementing a system that that folks can comply with because what we're seeing from other States as they've hired a number of contact racers. But what happens is folks don't they and they do it by phone and we see that folks don't answer the phone. Massachusetts was one of the States that was first sort of the first out of the gate and doing a lot of contact tracing and we are actually trying to learn lessons from that which they have been very kind to share Around the fact that that if you just do phone it is often you will miss someone on the phone or they just don't pick up the phone so we already are troubleshooting strategies to make sure that we can make the contact with folks on the first try as opposed to having to call back again and again and again that reduces your workload as well, so we are trying to understand how many contacts do we think we're going to need in order to really be able to respond to to the work here. So I would say this is a work in progress. I don't have all the answers yet. we're trying to learn from other States. learn from our own internal resources redeploy what we can because we know we have to make all of our resources go further and then hire more as we go so I don't have a new number to share. I do feel like we're making good progress. I do appreciate all the work that local health departments have done around contact tracing and I'm appreciative of our new partners really focusing on hiring folks who come from. and that they're going to serve as well as you know from a culture perspective, but also a language perspective well. Thanks for that question. Gary. The next question is from Vanessa Russ WCNC TV Charlotte. Hi there, This is Vanessa Rufus with WCNC Charlotte. Thank you for taking my question Doctor Cohen. I wanted to ask you about some developments out of Lincoln County yesterday. we had learned that a restaurant knowingly violating the governor's orders decided to open its doors for dine in service and we were there last night as diners came in sat down and had their meals. Do you have a response to this development? So thanks for the question. As you know as we thought about easing restrictions here, we're trying to. Really data driven in our decisions First, we look at our trends and said you know we were stable. We could go forward and when we thought about some of those first activities that we could do, We knew that the virus gets transmitted more when people are indoors and they're sitting down for longer periods of time in close proximity so some of the higher risk activities or anything you could imagine that is indoors and sitting and potentially close by to one another restaurants. As we talked about earlier, those are the kinds of activities that are higher risk of transmitting the virus as they think about other kinds of activities that we allowed in phase one, there are really two kinds. One was either be outside right being outside allows you to social distance more. There's better air circulation. You're you you can be a part when you're indoors. We wanted to allow indoor activities that allow you to walk around. So if you're in a retail setting, you were to close store or. A florist a jeweler you can continue to walk around the not in any one spot for more than a few minutes as you look for an item, so we try to focus on those kind of lower risk kind of scenarios first so restaurant as you can see what is a high risk scenario? Plus we know when you are eating, it's really hard to eat when the face covering on so we know folks are taking off their face coverings to eat and drink understandably so again higher risk situation that again we wanted to. We had a little bit longer period of time to see stability and our in our numbers and that we have our contemplating moving forward with opening restaurants just at the end of this week. so we'd ask folks to hang in there with us as we look at our numbers, make sure we're stable. we're not gonna be perfect right. We're trying to have this balance here of recognizing stability does not mean perfection, but we're stable enough to move on to phase two. so the folks in Lincoln, you know I. That that the local community and and folks there, you know have called out you know that that really isn't in line with the governor's request from the executive order that is not currently at this moment the best interest of public health you know we want folks to be making good decisions to protect not just themselves, but their community right cuz the heart. I know this is so hard to understand because this is even new for the scientists in the public health experts, the fact that you could transmit this virus and not even. About it is is a really hard and challenging part of Covid- 19, and that's what we're trying to make sure that we are doing when folks get sick. I think many have gotten the message they know if you are sick, stay home stay isolated. it's that period when you don't either know you're going to get sick yet or maybe you aren't gonna get sick at all cuz some people don't get sick at all from Covid- 19. It's a it's a crazy part about this virus where some can get so severely ill. They're on a ventilator and it could succumb to the illness and others don't have any symptoms. That's why we're asking everyone. To do their part and this is what's really hard about this. This is because everyone has to do it together. But that's okay. I know that North Carolina we can do this. It is hard. it will be a new way of moving through the world. it won't be as comfortable to be six feet apart from our friends and our loved ones or to wear this face coverings but we can go back to things like restaurants and salons when we do that kind of work to support each other and What we're asking folks to do, please abide by the governor's ruling and when you are around people do your do your three W's. We can get through this together so please hang in there with us. Our final question will be from Rebecca Martinez with WGN Radio. To 40 - seven on the National Rebecca Martinez from UNC, I saw that the North Carolina Council of Churches has sent a letter to congressional delegation from North Carolina at and for intercession on behalf of the North Carolina residents and ice detention. I'm just wondering if there's any guidance being given to a state prisons or even enforcement regarding immigrations folks who. Have Ving immigration statuses to try to prevent their vulnerability to probe in 19 Rebecca You're a little bit in and out there, but what I would say about Covid- 19 and how we're thinking about it goes back to how I was talking about the last question we are in this together as a community. those of us who are here in North Carolina, We need to be protecting each other and this virus does like it doesn't respect County borders or even state borders or party lines. Nothing right They this virus can take us all and that's why we need to be in this. Right to protect us all and that means getting access to care for all getting testing available for all and to do it in a way that protects our our entire state. So there's a lot of collective action that we need to do here in order to fight the virus and I think that's across the board. We're thinking about correctional facilities and what do we need to do to both protect those who are incarcerated as well as the staff we are doing those things. How do we think about our skilled nursing facility? How do we? About our migrant farm workers as well, so who live in congregate settings, which we know are high risk. I think whether we're looking at any of those populations or anywhere in North Carolina, I think the the sentiment is the same about having us do this collective actions to protect each other and then when we do that and we can get folks testing and we do this collective actions like that protects us. all every community is protected when all of us can get access to testing get access to care can get Can do the three W's can do all of these things collectively and I know that that is that is the path that will allow us to get back to those things that we love and allow us to keep moving forward in the phases of that that are coming forward here. So Rebecca thanks for that question and I'm sorry. I missed a piece of it. so we're happy to follow up after if there's another nuance there that I missed and with that, okay, I think you've heard from both the directors and I a lot about the three w's Be back later this week with more on our trends and progress towards phase two. Alright. thanks so much. You've been watching a Corona virus update. WITN now returns to regular programming.