Vance County’s percent positive rate for COVID-19 stands at 11.5 percent, more than double Granville County’s rate, according to information provided by Granville-Vance Public Health from the CDC COVID Data Tracker. Vance’s positivity rate also surpasses the state’s overall daily percent positive rate, which currently is 10.5 percent.
Health officials from Dr. Anthony Fauci to GVPH Health Director Lisa M. Harrison continue to urge everyone who is eligible to be fully vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19, especially with the holidays looming and omicron cases surging.
In the past seven days, there have been 168 new cases in Vance County. According to the CDC COVID Data Tracker, that represents high community transmission, Harrison wrote in the GVPH update.
Similarly, in Granville County during the same period, 141 new cases have been reported. Granville’s percent positivity rate is 5.2 percent, but Harrison noted that still represents high community transmission.
Recent discussion in Granville County centered around the rationale for including inmates of the Butner federal prison in the totals for Granville County. Harrison’s report included a breakdown of inmates versus community residents with COVID-19. According to the update, there are 13 inmates at the Butner facility who have tested positive for COVID-19 and also 13 county residents who work at the prison who have tested positive.
“All data we report are in residents of each of our two counties only, and regardless of where those residents lay their head down at night within our county jurisdiction, those cases represent community spread. All outbreaks and clusters are reported through the NC Electronic Disease Surveillance System and are available for review on the state’s data dashboard here: https://covid19.ncdhhs.gov/,” the update stated.
There have been 7,454 cases of COVID-19 in Vance County and 8,685 cases of COVID-19 in Granville County for a total of 16,139 across the health district.
Granville County has documented 106 deaths as a result of COVID-19 and Vance County has a total of 104 deaths for a total of 210 deaths across the health district.
For those who may want to calculate percentages, the total population of Granville County according to the latest census, is 60,443 and the population of Vance County is 44,535.
While health experts are encouraged that the omicron variant doesn’t seem to be as severe as the Delta variant, the transmissibility rate is quite high.
“The omicron variant of COVID-19 is upon us across NC and the US,” Harrison stated. “We know how to protect people from severe illness and we have the tools needed to do it. They include: vaccination, boosting, masking, testing, distancing, hand-washing and improved ventilation when we are in enclosed spaces with others.”
Those things all work best in a layered approach. No one thing is perfect, but added up together, lives are saved and respect is shown to our valued health care system workforce who are very much hoping for a little holiday rest here and there – we have the power to give them a break if we follow these public health mitigation approaches.
“We do expect cases to go up significantly in the coming weeks from omicron, and so far, it is still true today at least, that all indictors are pointing to omicron causing less severe illness than Delta,” Harrison said. However, since omicron is still so much more contagious than other forms of COVID-19, there will be larger case numbers but we will still likely see increases in hospitalizations and death as well – those hospitalizations and death continue to occur mostly in unvaccinated individuals. Omicron is also reaching younger populations more easily, so we need to keep an eye on that, too.”
To date, GVPH has administered 35,286 vaccines including 18,219 first doses and 17,067 second doses.
Vance County details:
- 63 percent of those over the age of 5 have received at least one dose of their COVID-19 vaccine and 58 percent are fully vaccinated.
- 13 percent of those ages 5-11 years old have received at least one dose of their COVID-19 vaccine and 7 percent are fully vaccinated.
- 46 percent of those ages 12-17 years old have received at least one dose of their COVID-19 vaccine and 40 percent are fully vaccinated.
Granville County details:
- 67 percent of those over the age of 5 have received at least one dose of their COVID-19 vaccine and 63 percent are fully vaccinated.
- 14 percent of those ages 5-11 years old have received at least one dose of their COVID-19 Vaccine and 9% are fully vaccinated
- 44 percent of those ages 12-17 years old have received at least one dose of their COVID-19 Vaccine and 40 percent are fully vaccinated.
Stay informed about trends across the state and nation by visiting the CDC Data Tracker by County and the NCDHHS COVID-19 Dashboard. Relevant graphs from these dashboards are available on the GVPH website at https://gvph.org/covid-19_dashboard/.
