Nearly 22% of people in North Carolina who tested for coronavirus on Sunday tested positive, according to data released by the state Department of Health and Human Services. That's one out of every five people who got a COVID-19 test result.
"Not only is that number more than double what it was when our data was updated last week, but it's also the highest percent positive since the pandemic began," according to WRAL's investigative data reporter Ali Ingersoll.
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The positivity rate has been steadily rising since last weekend and jumped from 15.3% to 21.9% over the weekend, according to WRAL Data Trackers.
That case positivity rate is dangerously high, according to officials at the World Health Organization. They recommend that governments should only reopen if their case positivity rate is at or below 5% for 14 days.
Georgia is also reporting an exceptionally high coronavirus case positivity rate at 22.5%, according to data from Johns Hopkins University of Medicine. Tennessee is reporting that 19.3% of all tests administered Monday have come back positive.
20% of cases in central North Carolina last week were from omicron, according to UNC Health System's genome sequencing.
On Christmas Eve, more than 75,000 people got tested for coronavirus, which is the highest number of people since Sept. 17 during the delta surge.
On Christmas Day, North Carolina added nearly 6,900 new coronavirus cases — the most added in a single day since Sept. 17.
More than 32,000 people also tested positive for the virus since last Wednesday and nearly 3,700 people tested positive this Wednesday.
NC's COVID-19 hospitalizations jump
The number of people who are hospitalized with coronavirus jumped by 300 people since Wednesday, which is an 18% increase.
Statewide, there are only 541 ICU beds left as more coronavirus patients fill beds.
State health officials told WRAL News on Tuesday that they are carefully watching the state's hospitalization rates.
"We are starting to see them increase. We are concerned and we certainly want to keep an eye on that," said Susan Kansagra, senior deputy director for public health. "We don't know if omicron if the increase in number of cases, given that its milder, if we're still going to see a large number of hospitalizations."
A quarter of all people hospitalized in the state have COVID-19 and the majority of those people are unvaccinated. 63% of the population are fully vaccinated and around 39% of those people have received a booster shot, according to state data.
"If you're not vaccinated, then you have to really be worried about this, because that's who's filling up our hospitals," said Dr. David Wohl, infectious disease physician for the University of North Carolina's School of Medicine.
"We really want to focus our efforts to make sure we aren't overrunning our hospital systems," Kansagra said.
State does not know how many positive at-home COVID tests
Kansagra said that the majority of tests tracked by the state are lab PCR tests.
"The at-home tests that people in the general public take are not required to be reported to local health departments," she said Tuesday. Thousands of people decided to order at-home coronavirus tests before the holidays, and LabCorp reported they were running short on tests.
People who do get a positive test at home should still follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines to isolate, she said.
While those tests are not required to be reported to the state, Kansagra said the health department still has a good sense of trends in coronavirus cases.
Health experts warn there will be dark days ahead
The latest omicron variant is expected to make the start of 2022 difficult as governments and hospitals deal with another surge in COVID-19 patients.
Local health officials predict that omicron will likely peak mid-January or February. That's still a few weeks out, and officials urge that people should get vaccinated ahead of the surge if they haven't yet.
"The more antibodies you have to protect you against COVID-19 of any variant, the better off you are," Wohl said.
Some experts predict that the U.S. will blow past its daily record of new coronavirus cases set in January last year.
CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner said he expects that America will see half a million new coronavirus cases each day.
Vaccines, and particularly booster shots, protect people from getting seriously sick from the latest omicron variant. But there's still millions of Americans who are not fully vaccinated. Many more unvaccinated people will likely die and fill up hospitals, experts predict.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that small gatherings of fully vaccinated people will be safe for New Years. Fauci recommends that people stay away from large crowds with pockets of unvaccinated people.