Raleigh, North Carolina – The number of coronavirus-related deaths in North Carolina continues to rise and the state surpassed 9,000 deaths during the pandemic on Thursday.
131 deaths were reported on Thursday, the sixth time in eight days that the state has exceeded 100. This period has become the deadliest in the state since the pandemic began last March, with 846 deaths since January 21st.
At the start of the pandemic, the state did not record 846 deaths until almost three months had passed.
“Over the past week and a half, one of the days was the highest we’ve had of deaths in our hospital during the entire pandemic,” said Dr. Brian Burrows, director of emergency services at Duke Regional Hospital. , in Durham.
“The hardest part is seeing people who aren’t with their loved ones when they breathe,” Burrows said. “You have people who are too sick to have one iPad to talk to their families. “
A WakeMed in Raleigh, specialist in lung care and criticism Dr. Sachin Patel said death certificates add up.
“We will have a day when almost four people pass, some of them older, others young enough to be our brothers and sisters,” Patel said.
Eighty-three percent of deaths to date were people aged 65 or over. This group is now at the forefront of the virus vaccine line. Less than 4 percent of deaths occurred in people under the age of 50.
Still, Burrows said, the virus can attack people you wouldn’t expect.
“When you see someone your own age being intubated by this virus, you think,‘ Oh, God, ’” he said.
The number of new infections and hospitalizations for COVID-19 has stabilized in recent days after rising in early January after the holidays in which many people ignored the advice of public health officials to avoid traveling and meeting with family and friends.
The 3,238 people treated for the virus at North Carolina hospitals on Thursday were the lowest since Dec. 27 and the seven-day average of 3,361 COVID-19 hospitalized patients is the lowest since New Year’s Day.
About 7.9 percent of coronavirus tests reported Thursday were positive, which is the lowest level in more than two months.
Another 6,490 new cases of coronavirus were reported statewide on Thursday, but the seven-day continuous average of new cases has dropped from 8,654 a day on Jan. 12 to 5,843 a day now, marking the first time since January 1 that the average has been below 6,000 a day.
“It was predicted, and unfortunately we were right: cases increased, hospitalizations increased, and deaths also increased,” said Rachel Roper, an associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of North Carolina. .
Shannon Carson, head of the Division of Lung Disease and Critical Care Medicine at UNC School of Medicine, said the virus-related deaths are the final metric that increases after infections and hospitalizations.
“After a week or two, they may need to be hospitalized,” Carson said, adding that someone could be transferred to an intensive care unit after four or five days in the hospital. “Nearly 30 percent of them, if they get to the intensive care unit, will not survive hospitalization.”
“COVID cases can be found [hospitals] for weeks and they can be on the fans for weeks (and in some cases, I’ve heard for months), and then people can die a little longer after they get infected, ”Roper said.
Patel said people need to understand how dangerous the virus can be.
“This is far from over,” he said. “We’re really in the middle and now it’s going to get worse in March.”