Usually, it’s terrific to be No. 1. It’s great in football, basketball and baseball, for instance.
However, it’s not good at all to be No. 1 when it comes to COVID-19 deaths.
When compared to its pier counties in the state – 10 counties similar in population that the county is often grouped with for statistical studies – Guilford County is leading in COVID-19 deaths per capita.
Guilford County Health Director Iulia Vann revealed that troubling stat to the Guilford County Board of Commissioners at the board’s Thursday, Oct. 7 meeting.
Vann told the commissioners that, while in some categories the county was doing very well in regard to its COVID-19 numbers, it wasn’t doing well in the category of per capita deaths when compared to pier counties.
“When it comes to COVID-19 deaths, Guilford County scores the highest,” Vann said.
Vann told the board that county health officials and others have had discussions as to why the COVID-19 death rate is so high in Guilford County compared to other similarly situated counties in the state.
“We have a lot of programs for our citizens but that also means we have a lot of adult care facilities,” she said. “And a lot of individuals in those facilities have been negatively affected by COVID-19. A lot of deaths that have been reported are in those facilities.”
When compared, in that same category, to national pier counties, Guilford County comes in near the low end of the chart.
“So, we are doing way better than all the counties nationally, but as far as in comparison to North Carolina, we are not doing good in that particular category,” Vann told the board.
The high COVID-19 death rate in Guilford County has been a concern since the early days of the pandemic.
Vann said at the meeting that she believed the large number of elderly care facilities in Guilford County is the main contributor to that negative stat.
She said after the meeting that there could be other causes as well.
Sounds like those masks and mega expensive mobile vaccine clinics are working out really well… Meanwhile in Florida, where no-one cares, their case counts are down to nearly nothing compared to a month ago. Just further proof that lockdowns and mandates only prolong the inevitable. If things had been left alone last year. We’d all be pretty much over this mess already.
FL was the leading State for deaths per capita for the two months of summer and are 20th in rank for vaccinations. Maybe herd immunity finally slowed it down for them. High cost to pay for hitting that immunity target given that there is a free and safe vaccine available.
Truth is science still doesn’t really understand what drives a spike or a decline. They know it tends to follow two month cycles with any range of period of pause between spikes. Certainly human actions plays some role as well a population density and social events that push populations together (like schools reopening) etc…
Cloth masks only make a small different and even higher end medical grade masks are not a 100% barrier. The fight of mask mandates is political and no longer about public health (thanks nutter Republicans). They make some sense for some situations but not all. Mask use doesn’t fully explain a spike starting or ending. Neither does vaccine rate (this may change now that some states are hitting the 70% mark).
From a personal perspective, I am pro mask as an over abundance of caution and firmly in support of vaccines.
Mandates don’t really help that much. They just get the nutters all in a tizzy (and in the end even more firmly anti mask and vaccine) and they are mostly impossible to enforce.
For people that actually care about public health….they should focus on educating the public with real factual information and ask for civil compliance now that the worst of the crisis seems over here in Guilford County.
For now.
Wake County has 24 LTCFs. Guilford County has 21.
https://www.ncdemography.org/2021/02/15/covid-19-and-long-term-care-facilities-in-nc/
Wake County has twice the population.
Guilford County has the same number of COVID-19 fatalities.
Guilford County and NC in general had a very slow response to help the senior care facilities.
(1) PPE was in short supply and help didtn’t arrive until May.
(2) Employees of the facilities quit out of fear but there was no response from our leaders to provide them help.
(3) The guidance in NC as to what to do with Covid positive patients when released from hospitals was no different than in NY. Governor Cuomo gets a lot of negative press for his guidance to send Covid positive patients back into care facilities, but no one ever says a bad word about Governor Cooper doing the same.
Combined, these 3 issues led to many deaths in Guilford County and in the entire state.
We still aren’t doing much better in aiding these facilities.
Currently there are 419 facilities with an active Covid outbreak with133 deaths. 135 schools have outbreaks with “0” deaths. Which facilities need our attention more?
Why doesn’t the Guilford County COVID dashboard include a “deaths by date” graph ?
When did all of these deaths occur? How many have occurred since July 2021?
Media, and therefore politicians love to use the total numbers (since March 2020) because its sounds so much worse than it is currently.
A surprise? Really?
It’s functioning at its level. Meeting all expectations.