New Mecklenburg County COVID-19 cases continue to jump with triple-digit increases

Mecklenburg County saw another triple-digit increase in daily reported COVID-19 cases Monday, according to state health data.

And daily cases, hospitalizations and percentage of test positives have continued to increase as well.

“These increasing trends are a clear sign that COVID-19 continues to spread throughout our community,” county public health Director Gibbie Harris said Friday in a statement. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Ninety-five people with COVID-19 have died in Mecklenburg as of Monday, according to remarks that Harris gave to business leaders.

More than half of Mecklenburg County deaths were people connected to nursing homes or long-term care facilities, according to the county health department. Nineteen of those facilities in the county have an outbreak of the disease, Harris said.

Mecklenburg added 162 new cases from the previous day, for a total of 4,412 Monday morning, the state Department of Health and Human Services reported.

That number is cumulative since March. Roughly two-thirds of people with reported Mecklenburg cases have since recovered, according to county health officials.

But since the state began a phased re-opening on May 8, daily reported cases have increased. Mecklenburg saw its first single-day increase of over 200 cases on Friday, with 232 new reported cases, according to state numbers.

From May 23 to 29, the average number of new cases reported daily in Mecklenburg was 126. For the week prior, the average was 81. Statewide, DHHS reported 674 new cases Monday, for a total of 29,263, and nine more deaths, for a total of 898.

As businesses reopen and residents get more comfortable with the risks, officials are playing the tricky balancing act of opening the economy back up yet limiting activity enough to keep this disease from spreading too rapidly, Harris said Monday.

“We’ve got our feet in two different worlds and we’re trying to straddle that and make it work,” she said.

Mecklenburg COVID-19 update

As of May 27 — the last date demographic data was publicly available — county coronavirus data show:

▪ An average of about 79 people with lab-confirmed coronavirus infections were hospitalized at acute-care facilities in the past week. Those numbers reflect an increase over the past two weeks, according to Mecklenburg health officials.

▪ An average of 8.2% of people who were tested were positive, showing an increase over the last 14 days, health officials say. The figure includes only COVID-19 tests conducted by Atrium Health and Novant Health.

▪ About 3 in 4 people diagnosed with COVID-19 locally were adults ages 20 to 59 years old.

▪ Around 2 in 3 cases have met the criteria to be released from isolation.

▪ About 1 in 8 people diagnosed were hospitalized due to their illness. People age 60 or older were more likely to need hospital care compared to younger people with the coronavirus.

▪ The exact number of people in Charlotte and Mecklenburg with COVID-19 is unknown, and many people with the virus have not been tested, health officials say. The case total likely represents a fraction of all people with coronavirus, Mecklenburg officials have said.

Observer reporter Austin Weinstein contributed to this report

This story was originally published June 1, 2020 at 11:36 AM.

Hannah Smoot

The Charlotte Observer

704-358-5349

Hannah Smoot covers business in Charlotte, focusing on health care and transportation. She has been covering COVID-19 in North Carolina since March 2020. She previously covered money and power at The Rock Hill Herald in South Carolina and is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.