Report: North Carolina ranks among the top 25 in the world for worst coronavirus outbreaks

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — According to a report, North Carolina is ranked among the top 25 in the entire world for the worst COVID-19 outbreaks.

Right now, North Carolina is 25th in the world for worst coronavirus outbreaks.

According to a chart by the New York Times showing the newest cases per million, the Tar Heel state comes in right below South Africa.

North Carolina’s COVID-19 hospitalizations continued to go up on Friday with the state health department reporting an additional 12 patients.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services said 1,046 patients are in the hospital in relation to the virus.

NCDHHS said 22 percent of the state’s ICU beds are available. The state has 871 ventilators in use and 2,502 available.

The state’s total number of lab-confirmed cases topped 80,000 with NCDHHS reporting 81,331 on Friday.

A total of 1,150,612 tests have been completed.

The number of deaths attributed to the virus moved to 1,479 on Friday – up from 1,461 on Thursday.

Fifty-nine percent of those deaths were people 75 or older.

Some of the coronavirus measures in North Carolina have shown incremental improvement in the nearly two weeks since the state-mandated the use of masks for people in public, a CBS17.com data analysis found.

The slight changes appear to fall in line with the results of a study published last month by healthaffairs.org that found drops in the daily growth rate of COVID-19.

The average daily growth rate on Thursday was 2.2 percent, down slightly after it was at 2.4 percent on June 26 — the day Gov. Roy Cooper’s mask mandate took effect.

It usually takes at least two weeks for the results from an event to show up in the data.

“I think it is working,” Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen said Thursday. “It doesn’t mean we’re stable yet, and we have more work to do.”

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