The COVID-19 numbers in the state of North Carolina are getting better and better, and a new milestone was reached on Tuesday, March 9 when the state announced that the number of newly reported cases was 997. 

The fact that the number was under 1,000 created a lot of excitement – although, of course, state and national health officials are still warning everyone not to let their guard down now that the tide has turned.

State health officials have also had a goal of seeing under 5 percent positive coronavirus test results for all tests conducted.  In the Tuesday data, that number for the state still hung at over 5 percent – but just barely so.  It was 5.2 percent.  With more vaccinations being given every day, health officials are optimistic that the rate will drop below that milestone soon.

As of March 9, there were 1,147 hospitalized patients battling COVID-19, and the total coronavirus death count for the state is 11,552.

Things are looking much better on the community spread frontier as well.  With the updated numbers, the NC COVID-19 County Alert System counted only six of the state’s 100 counties as “red,” a category that denotes a great deal of community spread.  That’s a decrease from 27 red counties on Monday, Feb. 22.  This is the fewest number of red counties in North Carolina since the state began the alert system last year.

Locally, things have been looking up on the vaccination front.  Guilford County now not only has its regular weekly allotment of vaccines from the state, but the county was also lucky enough to get a federally run mass vaccination site. 

There still aren’t enough vaccines to go around. However, the Guilford County Division of Public Health has already started to have discussions on how to convince everyone eligible to get vaccinated – since what’s now a supply problem is expected to become a demand problem fairly soon.