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Murphy – Last year this week, there was a flu outbreak at Cherokee County Schools. That caused one school to have to start winter break two days early, as 20 percent of students and 25 percent of staff on that campus were sick.
This year, so far, only one child has had the flu, and there has been just a little bit of strep going around, lead nurse Heather Watson said.
“Usually, at this time of year, we start to see a lot of flu,” Watson said.
She thinks the measures in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are also helping prevent the spread of other illnesses. The schools have also not seen a spread of COVID among students yet, although last week 25 students were quarantined at Peachtree Elementary – the same school that had to close early a year ago – for possible exposure to students who tested positive.
Health Director David Badger said this is the impact they were hoping to see. He praised both Cherokee County Schools and The Learning Center charter school for being responsive as proactive to preventing spread of illness.
“It’s a good thing,” Badger said. “I give them a world of credit for that, I think we’re seeing that pay off.”
Overall, he said the flu numbers for the region are completely different than last year’s. In Cherokee County, 2.5 percent of the population had the flu as of Dec. 14, 2019, and as of Monday, it’s down to “virtually nothing.” Badger credited all the things people have been doing – staying home if feeling sick, washing hands, keeping a distance from others and wearing a mask – to keeping the numbers low.
“It kinda shows if we do those little things,” Badger said, “it is having a positive impact.”
He said while the numbers are much lower, they are still seeing people come into the health department with flu symptoms, and most of the people getting tested for COVID-19 are showing symptoms of illness. The health department has flu vaccines available for $25, which insurance should cover.
Appointments are not needed for a flu vaccine. However, Badger asked that residents do not come to the health department for a vaccine if they are already feeling ill.
COVID-19 vaccines arrived in the state Monday morning, but Badger said the county was still waiting as of Monday to see when and what it will get. The initial supplies were to be prioritized for health-care workers at high risk for exposure to COVID-19 as well as long-term care facility staff and residents.
Badger said the county is prepared to receive and administer vaccines, has a vaccine management system ready and has a storage capacity for thousands of doses, depending on the type of vaccine it receives.
“We’ve pretty much done all the ground work,” he said.
As of Monday afternoon, the county had 83 active cases. Since March, the county has had 1,099 total cases, including 19 people from other states who tested positive while in the county, and 21 people who passed away after testing positive. There were three people hospitalized Monday morning, according to information Badger had available.
He said a large number of residents were also quarantined as contacts of those who tested positive. While he didn’t have the exact number of those quarantined, he said it’s on average about 5-10 people per person actively positive. Many people are being affected by the virus as the result of recent gatherings, including Thanksgiving.
“The virus is in our community,” Badger said. “Don’t put yourselves at risk, don’t put you loved ones at risk.”
As of the Dec. 8 report for the COVID-19 County Alert System, Cherokee County was designated as red for critical community spread. In previous alerts issued Nov. 17 and Nov. 23, Cherokee County was orange for substantial community spread.
Cherokee was one of 30 counties across the state that became red counties in the latest alert. Only two counties that were red in the previous alert – Davie and Wilkes – improved their conditions.
The alert tracked metrics from Nov. 21 through Dec. 4.
To be labeled a red county, the new cases over 14 days must be greater than 200 per 100,000 residents, and either the percent of positive results must be greater than 10 percent or the hospital impact must high. Cherokee County had 349.5 cases per 100,000 residents during that time period and 10.3 percent of results returning positive. The hospital impact remained low.
There are no differences in the recommendations for orange and red counties.
Using data collected from 1,061 cases, the state reported Monday that 10 percent of the county’s cases were those ages 0-17, 9 percent were ages 18-24, 28 percent were ages 25-49, 25 percent were ages 50-64, 16 percent were ages 65-74 and 13 percent were ages 75 or older.
Anyone who experiences symptoms should contact their primary care provider, the health department or urgent care. COVID-19 symptoms range from mild to severe and may appear 2-14 days after exposure, while flu symptoms appear 1-4 days after exposure.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, both COVID-19 and flu symptoms may include fever, cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, fatigue, sore throat, congestion or runny nose, muscle aches, headache and nausea or vomiting, diarrhea. COVID-19 symptoms may also include a new loss of taste or smell.
Anyone can have mild to severe symptoms, but older adults and those with underlying medical conditions appear to be at higher risk for severe illness. The CDC said the virus spreads very easily, and the risk of spreading the virus increases the closer and longer a person’s interaction with another is.
As of Monday, North
Carolina had 441,365 confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 and 5,855 deaths related to the virus since the beginning of March. More than 365,000 of those cases were presumed to be recovered.
More than 6 million state residents have been tested for the virus. In the last week, 10-12 percent of the tests returned positive daily.
As of Dec. 5, there were only 15 people who tested positive for the flu and one flu-associated death across the state this season, according to the N.C. Department of Health & Human Services.