Dare County provides details on its 57 active COVID-19 cases in Tuesday’s update

Dare County released the following COVID-19 update for Tuesday, July 28, which details the county’s most recent active cases, testing efforts, and additional community information.

Dare County COVID-19 Case Update

The number of positive COVID-19 cases in Dare County is 331, 57 of which are considered active in Dare County. Of the 331 cases, 184 are residents and 147 are non-residents.

Currently, three residents remain hospitalized with complications from COVID-19.

Since the last Dare County DHHS Update issued, Friday, July 24, 2020 there have been 30 new positive cases. Of these 30 cases, 13 are residents and 17 are non-residents. The Dare County website has already been updated to reflect all of these cases.

Of the 13 resident cases since Friday, July 24th: 

• 3 of the cases are close contacts, 2 symptomatic and 1 asymptomatic, who acquired the virus by direct contact with individuals whose positive test results were reported on 7/21 and 7/23.
• One of the cases is symptomatic and acquired the virus by direct contact with an individual whose positive test result was reported on 7/21
• One of the cases is symptomatic and acquired the virus by direct contact with an individual whose positive test result was reported on 7/23
• 2 of the cases are family members, both symptomatic. It is unclear how the first family member acquired the virus, which indicates community spread.
• 2 of the cases are family members, one symptomatic and one asymptomatic. It is unclear how the first family member acquired the virus, which indicates community spread.
• 4 of the cases are not connected,all symptomatic. It is unclear how these individuals acquired the virus, which indicates community spread.

 Of the 17 non-resident cases since Friday, July 24th:

• 4 of the cases are household contacts, all  symptomatic. One of the individuals acquired the virus by direct contact with a family member from outside of Dare County. And then spread the virus to the other 3 individuals,
• 2 of the cases are family members, both symptomatic, who acquired the virus by direct contact with an individual who tested positive outside of Dare County.
• 3 of the cases are household contacts, 1 symptomatic and 2 asymptomatic, who acquired the virus by direct contact with individuals who tested positive outside of Dare County.
• 8 of the cases are not connected, 5 symptomatic and 3 asymptomatic. It is unclear how these individuals acquired the virus, which indicates community spread.

Contract tracing has been completed on 30 cases and direct contacts provided by these individuals have been identified, notified, and directed to quarantine for 14 days from the last date of exposure with the positive case.

COVID Questions and Guidance

If you have specific questions regarding COVID-19 please use the resources we have available. We welcome your phone calls at the COVID-19 call center at 252.475.5008  or you may email us your questions at covid19@darenc.com. We use social media as a tool to help share information with the public but we do not use that as the platform to answer specific questions. Please contact us directly via phone or email if you would like a response to a specific question.

Reducing the Spread

Over the past 2 weeks there were 55 and 54, respectively, new positive cases of COVID-19 in Dare County. This is not a surprise given the amount of people here and the level of social activity in the county. We are closely monitoring the virus transmission and how it is spreading locally, Over the past week about half of the cases acquired the virus by direct contact with known positive cases. In the other half of the cases the individuals were not able to identify how they acquired the virus.

Please follow the 3Ws to help protect you, your family, and our community from COVID-19.

• Wear a cloth face covering if you will be with other people.
• Wait 6 feet apart. Avoid close contact.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds or use hand sanitizer

Key Metrics

Dare County DHHS monitors and evaluates 4 key metrics associated with disease investigation and surveillance. The metrics are:

• Number of Tests
• Confirmed Cases
• Positive Tests as a Percent of Total Tests
• COVID Like Illness Surveillance

This past week there were 836 COVID-19 diagnostic tests performed in Dare County by local healthcare providers. This brings the total number of tests performed since early March to 6,509.  We had 55 positive cases between July 20 and July 26. The percent of positive tests to overall tests in Dare County since we started testing in early March increased again this week to 4.84%. The percent positive to total test for the past week alone was 6.6%. Syndromic surveillance of individuals presenting to the emergency department with COVID-19 related symptoms increased slightly from the previous week. Local urgent care centers continue to see a high number of patients presenting with COVID like symptoms.  These graphs can be found on the dare county website at www.darenc.com/covid19

Communications and Information Sharing

Dare County DHHS has an established schedule of communication to share information regarding COVID-19. On Tuesdays, a written update and a video update which includes an overview of the previous week’s COVID-19 key metrics is issued, and on Fridays a written update is issued. All released videos and written updates can be found on our website, DHHS facebook page, Dare County Twitter page, and Dare Emergency Management Twitter page. If you would like to receive these updates directly to your email, please sign up to receive our enotifications.

New positive cases are updated on the dashboard on our website and shared on the DHHS facebook page when we receive them. To find the most up-to-date information on COVID-19 cases in Dare County visit www.darenc.com/covid19. State COVID-19 data is available at https://covid19.ncdhhs.gov/dashboard.