RALEIGH, N.C. — Here are the latest updates on the impact of the coronavirus outbreak in North Carolina and across the globe:
What you need to know:
Map of current NC cases
Latest updates:
7 p.m.: A Durham nursing home saw a spike in coronavirus cases on Wednesday. County officials report 75 cases at Durham Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, up from 22 on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, six cases have been reported at Durham VA Healthcare System Community Nursing Home, up from five on Tuesday, while Treyburn Rehabilitation Center continues to have four cases.
Overall, Durham has 376 cases.
6:10 p.m.: Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said the number of virus cases nationwide have declined in recent days. The task force is looking at each state and individually when it comes to reopen the economy, she said, noting several states have fewer than 1,000 overall cases.
"Each of these governors, each of these mayors will have to make their individualized decisions after general guidelines are put out," Birx said.
5:50 p.m.: President Donald Trump says it appears that the U.S. has passed the peak of the coronavirus outbreak, and he plans to announce plans Thursday to restart portions of the nation's economy.
5:40 p.m.: A seventh resident of Springbrook Rehabilitation & Nursing Center in Clayton has died of coronavirus, officials said. The nursing home has had 35 current or former residents infected, as well as 19 staffers.
5:05 p.m.: A Wake County resident has died as a result of coronavirus-related complications, according to county health officials. The 81-year-old man is the first known Wake County resident to have died from the virus.
4:35 p.m.: Gov. Roy Cooper said counties can continue to set stricter guidelines for reopening local economies, but the state needs to set the floor for minimum requirements.
4:25 p.m.: The General Assembly will open its 2020 session on April 28, with measures in place to ensure health and safety, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger's office said.
Access to the Legislative Building and the Legislative Office Building will be restricted to lawmakers, legislative staff and credentialed media from April 20 to May 8. Building entrants will also have their temperatures taken with a thermometer.
"This policy is to balance the need for legislators to return to Raleigh to carry out their constitutional duties with the health and safety of members and the general public, as well as to limit the spread of COVID-19 while opening for business," a news release states.
4:20 p.m.: The stay-at-home orders don't interfere with people's right to protest, but they do prohibit mass gatherings, Gov. Roy Cooper said, without noting the Tuesday protest in downtown Raleigh by people urging him to ease restrictions that have crippled the state economy.
"Those executive orders are there for public safety, and we expect people to obey those orders wherever they are, whatever they're doing," he said.
4:15 p.m.: Gov. Roy Cooper said he has spoken to others governors to exchange ideas about how best to restart businesses. He said decisions will be made in the coming weeks as to how to adjust restrictions that last through April 30.
Data such as the testing, tracing and trends benchmarks he laid out will be used to determine how and when businesses can reopen, he said.
4 p.m.: Gov. Roy Cooper laid out the benchmarks needed to reopen North Carolina's economy amid the pandemic:
- More testing to determine the extent of the coronavirus in the state
- More public health workers to trace all of the contacts by infected people.
- Improved trends in terms of the number of cases, hospitalizations, deaths, the availability of personal protective gear and other measures.
"We can't stay home forever," Cooper said at a news conference. "We want to get back to work while avoiding a spike in cases."
3:55 p.m.: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he will sign an executive order that requires everyone in the state to wear a mask or a mouth/nose covering in public when not social distancing, according to CNN. People will be given three days to secure masks or coverings, and Cuomo said he is considering a civil penalty for those who break the rule.
3:50 p.m.: California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state's virus assistance will include giving $500 each to 150,000 undocumented adult immigrants.
3:45 p.m.: A Charlotte-area woman is using a Buzz Lightyear helmet as protection against the coronavirus.
3:40 p.m.: To avoid disruptions in agricultural-related employment and protect the nation’s food supply chain, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Agriculture will allow people in the country on H-2A visas to stay past the three-year limit outlined in the law. The change will allow farms to employ workers already in the U.S. instead of waiting on a seasonal workforce that might not be able to get into the country because of travel restrictions.
3:35 p.m.: Duke University has informed students that they won't be allowed back onto campus to pick up any belongings left behind when the campus shut down ast month and the school shifted to online classes amid the coronavirus outbreak.
Duke is hiring two moving and storage companies to pack, store and move the belongings of returning students to next year’s housing assignments. For graduating seniors, the belongings will be shipped to new addresses over the summer.
"Many details remain to be worked out, but it is important to us that we safeguard all student belongings with great care and attention to detail," Joe Gonzalez, assistant vice president of student affairs and dean for residential life, said in an email to students.
3:25 p.m.: Dunn City Manager Steven Neuschafer said he has laid off five of the city's 133 municipal employees because there is less work to do during the pandemic.
3:15 p.m.: The state Division of Employment Security said it has made more than $100 million in Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation payments to North Carolinians receiving unemployment assistance. The program provides an extra $600 in weekly unemployment insurance benefits to eligible claimants for the weeks between March 29 and July 31.
The state has paid more than $216 million in jobless benefits to 185,000 people since mid-March. Close to 90 percent of those claims are linked to virus-related business closures.
2:40 p.m.: Atrium Health and Novant Health say they no longer need a field hospital for coronavirus patients to be built on the campus of UNC-Charlotte. Th etwo hospital systems say they have converted enough beds at their various facilities to acute care to handle a potential surge of virus patients. Also, stay-at-home orders have helped slow the spread of the virus in the Charlotte area in recent days, they said.
1:55 p.m.: A dozen UNC Health workers have tested positive for the coronavirus, spokesman Alan Wolf said. Some of them were exposed outside of the hospital complex in Chapel Hill, he said.
"We’ve had an aggressive containment strategy for months, following CDC guidance to ensure they remain in isolation, receive the appropriate treatment and monitoring, and are cleared before they return to work," Wolf said in an email. "We also are aggressively testing any staff with a broad range of symptoms so we can do an extensive contact investigation if they are positive. We've tested hundreds of workers."
1:50 p.m.: Coronavirus concerns have prompted the state Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services to cancel the annual Got To Be NC Festival, which highlights foods produced in North Carolina.
"We know how much our community enjoys coming out and getting a taste of what North Carolina agriculture is all about," the department said in an online post. It’s a highlight of the spring for our staff, vendors, sponsors and entertainers as well. We look forward to welcoming you back to the fairgrounds when it is safe for us all to gather."
1:40 p.m.: Although Raleigh has suspended weekly yard waste pick-up during the pandemic, the city will collect major debris from Monday's storms, starting Thursday.
"To mitigate safety concerns and adhere to social distancing guidelines, we will use trucks that can be operated with a single employee. Normal yard waste collection requires multiple employees in close quarters," city officials said in a statement. "Only large piles of tree limbs and branches will be collected. The equipment we will use is not capable of picking up containers, grass clippings or loose (or bags) of leaves. Those items will not be collected."
1:35 p.m.: A Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools employee involved in the effort to provide meals to students while schools remain closed has tested positive for the coronavirus, officials said. The person was involved in "logistical support" for the program and wasn't involved in preparing or handling food.
"The news of a staff member testing positive for the virus has served as the impetus for us to ensure our essential staff are divided into multiple teams, with only one team reporting to work at any given time. Along with social distancing measures and the use of protective equipment, we believe this will provide a better opportunity to keep the food initiative and critical operations rolling in case a staff member or volunteer gets sick," Acting Superintendent Patrick Abele said in a statement. "It is important that we sustain the food distribution, as we know many of our students depend on these meals for daily nutrition."
12:10 p.m.: Three more residents at Louisburg Nursing Center have died of coronavirus-related complications, officials said. Two others there had died previously.
Louisburg Nursing Center is among four long-term care facilities in central North Carolina with multiple virus-related deaths. Six residents of Springbrook Rehabilitation & Nursing Center in Clayton have died, as have four residents at PruittHealth's Carolina Point facility in Durham and two at Mount Olive Center in Wayne County.
12:05 p.m.: State Farm, the nation’s largest auto insurer, said it will provide a dividend of up to $2 billion to its customers because people under stay-at-home orders are driving less and getting into fewer crashes. The dividend will appear as a credit on auto policies and, on average, will equal about 25 percent of the premium from March 20 through May 31..
"State Farm is returning value through a dividend to our customers," Chairman, President and CEO Michael Tipsord said in a statement. "We insure more cars than anyone, and we see from our claims activity people are driving less. This dividend is one of the ways we’re working to help our customers during this unprecedented situation."
12 p.m.: PGA Tour golfer and Raleigh native Chesson Hadley and his family recently gave away Bojangles’ gift cards to first responders and used a drone to fly in Bojangles’ biscuits and a note to his grandmother, who is in an assisted living facility.
11:15 a.m.: Two residents of the Mount Olive Center nursing home have died of coronavirus-related complications, according to Chief Medical Officer Dr. Richard Feifer. Overall, 21 residents and four staffers at the facility have tested positive for the virus.
"We just do not know yet exactly how the virus is entering, so we stay as hyper-vigilant as we can, and as we learn more, we implement more and more safety precautions," Feifer said in a statement. "I can assure you that we are working round the clock to keep our patients and residents healthy and as safe as possible. We are doing everything in our power – and everything medical experts know as of at this time – to protect our patients, residents and employees."
Map: Virus cases in NC long-term care facilities
11:10 a.m.: The Economic Injury Disaster Loan program run by the U.S. Small Business Administration has been overwhelmed by applications and is weeks behind in getting money out, according to the Washington Post. The program was originally intended to provide aid to businesses hit by natural disasters such as tornadoes and wildfires and has a pledge to provide money within three days of an application, but when it was expanded to cover the effects of coronavirus lockdowns, the SBA found it didn't have the staff or resources to keep up.
11 a.m.: Point 27, an Atlanta-based nonprofit, sent a necklace with a folded flag pendant inscribed with John 15:15, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends," to the family of Montgomery County Deputy Sypraseuth Phouangphrachanh,
who died March 31 from COVID-19, which he contracted on duty as a school resource officer. Phouangphrachanh is the first North Carolina law enforcement officer reportedly to die from COVD-19.
10:40 a.m.: Confirmed coronavirus cases have topped 2 million worldwide with more than 168,009 reported deaths, according to the latest numbers from Johns Hopkins University.
10:30 a.m.: Having trouble finding meat at your grocery store? You're not alone.
Thousands of workers have been ordered off the job at packing plants across the country. On Sunday, Smithfield Foods announced the shutdown of its Sioux Falls, S.D., factory where more than 230 employees tested positive for COVID-19. The plant employs 3,700 workers. The company says its operations in Wilson, which employ 600 workers, and Tar Heel, which employ 4,000 workers, will continue processing meat.
Other meat producers, including Tyson, have shut down factories because of positive cases of coronavirus and safety concerns from employees, who have chosen not to report to work.
10:15 a.m.: Event organizers say the Republican National Convention, scheduled for August in Charlotte, should go on as planned.
10:10 a.m.: BB&T and other banks are reporting slowdowns and outages in their phone, online and mobile systems as a wave of people try to access and manage the stimulus deposits put into their accounts this morning.
10 a.m.: A group in Indiana is taking horses to visit nursing home residents to lift their spirits. Because of the outbreak and restrictions at most long-term care centers, many residents have been alone. That's why "Horses of Hope" is bringing the animals around to dozens of nursing homes to go from window to window, stopping at each one.
9:50 a.m.: People living in Orange County who need food can get it Wednesday. The Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina and the organization PORCH will distribute food from 10 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. at the Chapel Hill Public Library. Last week, the groups distributed large boxes of food to more than 350 households.
9:30 a.m.: Sources confirmed to WRAL News that a Raleigh police officer has tested positive for COVID-19. No other details were provided.
9 a.m.: It's Tax Day (technically). In a normal year, many people would be scrambling to get everything filed, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, the federal and state governments have postponed the filing date to July 15.
People who don't file their taxes by April 15 technically owe interest on money owed to the state. Gov. Roy Cooper and legislative leaders have committed to waiving interest on certain unpaid taxes once the General Assembly convenes later this month, but for now, the state Department of Revenue doesn't have the authority to excuse the interest.
8:45 a.m.: U.S. retail sales fell by a record 8.7% in March as Americans pulled back on spending, according to The Associated Press.
GasBuddy released the results of a study that found fuel demand in gallons purchased dropped 20% in March compared to the same period last year due to the pandemic. Brand loyalty has dropped 3%, with 55% of consumers filling up at more than one gas station per month in 2020 compared with 58% a month in 2019.
8:30 a.m.: Microsoft founder Bill Gates called President Donald Trump's decision to cut off U.S. payments to the World Health Organization "dangerous." Trump accused the organization of failing to do enough to stop the coronavirus from spreading after it first surfaced in China, but Gates said in a tweet that the WHO is needed more than ever during the pandemic.
8:15 a.m.: A South Carolina restaurant owner did a double-take after a customer left a $1,000 tip on a $19 check. The Beachfront Kitchen and Bar in Myrtle Beach opened its doors in February but quickly had to limit service because of coronavirus. Owner Jan Dobr said he's beyond thankful and plans to share the money with his employees.
6:45 a.m.: Four doctors at a New York hospital looked at data from 215 pregnant women who gave birth over a two-week period. Thirty-three patients ended up testing positive for coronavirus at admission, but only four were showing symptoms at the time. Among the women who were initially asymptomatic, only three developed a fever while still at the hospital.
6:30 a.m.: On Thursday, Raleigh will reopen its yard waste center to make it easier for people gardening at home. Last week, sanitation workers temporarily stopped curbside pickup of clippings, leaves, sticks and other yard waste to protect employees from contracting coronavirus. People can now drop off yard waste at the center, at 900 N. New Hope Road, without having to pay a tipping fee.
6 a.m.: Stimulus checks should be in the bank accounts of 80 million people. For most people who have filed their 2018 taxes, the money was deposited automatically. People who didn't give their information to the IRS may have to update their address or direct deposit information. People can visit irs.gov/coronavirus to check on the status of your check.
The Red Cross and other blood donation organizations like The Blood Connection are now asking for plasma donations as well, especially from people who have recovered from COVID-19. They say that plasma has antibodies in it that can fight the virus, and doctors are evaluating it as a treatment for patients with serious or immediately life-threatening coronavirus complications.
5 a.m.: More fast food chains, including McDonalds, Chick-fil-A and Dunkin Donuts, will provide face masks for employees. McDonald's plans to distribute more than 100 million non-medical-grade masks to the company's nearly 14,000 restaurants in the U.S. Chick-fil-A also started using face coverings, and Dunkin is requiring employees to wear single-use gloves and non-medical masks.
4:15 a.m.: At least 5,082 people in 93 North Carolina counties have tested positive for the coronavirus. There are at least 383 confirmed cases statewide of people recovering from the virus, although many counties aren't reporting those numbers. At least 121 people have died in North Carolina, and about 420 people are hospitalized.
4 a.m.: China waited six days before warning the public of coronavirus, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. In those six days, the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease, hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people, and millions began traveling for Lunar New Year celebrations.
President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, Jan. 20. But by that time, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, data shows.
