Fewer than 6,000 people in the state have tested positive for COVID-19 and have not recovered or died according to the data on the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) website.

The NCDHHS has provided a wealth of statistics during the COVID-19 pandemic, but one figure the NCDHHS doesn’t provide is how many cases there are currently in North Carolina.

Once a week on Monday, the NCDHHS provides a report on the number of people presumed to have recovered from COVID-19.  Unlike most diseases, someone is considered by the NCDHHS to have COVID-19 if they test positive, whether or not they have any symptoms.  So according to the NCDHHS data, every person who has a positive test result is a case regardless of whether they are sick or not.

According to the report, if someone has tested positive and has not been hospitalized in a two weeks, the NCDHHS considers them to be recovered.  If they have been hospitalized, the NCDHHS considers them recovered in 28 days and the report is based on that data.

The report is titled, “COVID-19 Patients Presumed to be Recovered Updated June 14, 2021.”

Since the report only counts patients who have recovered, to compute the number of people who have tested positive and haven’t recovered, the number who have died also has to be included.

According to the NCDHHS data, on June 14 a total of 1,008,926 had tested positive for COVID-19; 989,649 had recovered; and 13,292 people in the state had died. 

So according to the NCDHHS figures, on June 14, 5,985 people had tested positive and had not recovered or died.

North Carolina has a population of about 10.4 million people and the fact that 5,985 of them have tested positive for COVID-19 and have not recovered or died is considered by Gov. Roy Cooper enough to constitute a statewide emergency.

It does make you wonder how low that number has to go before Cooper no longer considers it a statewide emergency and gives up his vast emergency powers.