With nearly 20,000 new COVID cases, NC reports record high for second day in a row

The state's rate of positive cases also reached an all-time high of 22.9% on Friday, meaning almost 23% of all coronavirus tests in North Carolina are coming back positive.

The state is seeing the highest average of new cases since the beginning of the pandemic – even topping the spike from Delta by more than 3,000. We've also nearly 1,000 cases higher than the spike during last year's winter holidays.

The new high also spikes our 7-day rolling average of new cases once again, bringing us up to 9,702 cases per day on average for the past 7 days. That's nearly 3 times higher than our average two weeks ago.

On Thursday, the state Department of Health and Human Services reported 18,571 new coronavirus cases. Before Friday's numbers were released, that was the highest number seen in the pandemic so far.

In the state, 2,367 people are hospitalized with COVID-19.

Thursday's single-day increase was 60% higher than the previous record of 11,581 set in January of this year​. The number of new cases reported on about the same number of people who live in all of Warren County.

The sharp increase is not due to a fluke in state data and is not a random, single-day spike. We know that because the state also reported its highest case positivity rate at 22%, which means nearly a quarter of all coronavirus tests administered on Tuesday came back positive.

That means more than 84,000 coronavirus tests were taken in the past day, and more than one in five people who took a test ended up testing positive.

The number of new cases reported jumped by more than 400% in one week, according to data from the state department of health. On Monday, only 3,698 new cases were reported.

More than 4,000 people have visited the emergency room for coronavirus-like illness in the past day, according to the state.

On top of an increase in both hospitalizations and cases, 60 people died from the virus in the past 24 hours. That's the highest number we've seen since the beginning of November, according to WRAL Data Trackers.

So far, experts believe that the latest variant appears to be milder than other strains of the virus.

"We are concerned that even a very small portion of these cases ending up in the hospital could overwhelm our hospital and increase the loss of lives of those most vulnerable," incoming NCDHHS secretary Kody Kinsley said in a statement.

Recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that nearly 80% of all coronavirus cases in the South are from omicron.

New research presented by the U.K Health Security Agency, which is still in the process of being peer reviewed, suggests the chances someone catching the omicron coronavirus variant from someone in their own home is greater than with delta.

If one person has the virus, the adjusted odds of someone in the same space catching it are 3.2. By comparison, those odds were 1.7.

"The best way to think about these, if you're sick, how likely are you to transmit it to people around you," said Dr. Michael Smith, vaccine expert with Duke University Department of Pediatrics.

The increase in omicron cases may not cause as many hospitalizations or deaths as delta, but it could have other societal implications, Smith said.