Lenoir County: COVID results show the pandemic is not over
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March 25: 2,000+ new cases statewide while hospitalizations drop
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Kinston/Jones Free Press (kfp)
Three days before a Lenoir County resident was tested for the novel coronavirus, North Carolina public schools were ordered to shut down.
And eight days after Lenoir County Public Schools did so with really no choice, the resident received the first lab-confirmed positive test in the county – on March 24, 2020. I don’t think that anyone imagined exactly what was about to happen locally and around the world last year at this time, LCPS superintendent Brent Williams said. In what seemed to be an instant, the uncertainty of the COVID-19 virus turned the world upside down.
Yet most other states managed to roll out the vaccine more quickly than North Carolina, which has so far administered only about one-third of its allotment. That speed matters, as federal officials have said future distributions may be based on how quickly states are putting shots into arms.
But exactly why North Carolina has fallen behind is complicated.
A survey of dozens of county health departments across the state by the N.C. Watchdog Reporting Network shows a range of problems that have hampered their ability to vaccinate people in the first phase of the rollout namely front-line health workers and the elderly. Problems include: