GREENSBORO, N.C. — Guilford County leaders are keeping a close eye on the increasing cases and positivity rate in our area, and while restrictions aren't completely off the table, Commissioner Skip Alston said we're not at that point right now.
Case counts and the percent positive have started showing an increasing trend since the Thanksgiving holiday, something health experts and local officials said they expected.
"That’s alarming but not surprising because again when you’re looking at the Thanksgiving spike, we feel that the figures are probably going to go down the next couple of weeks, then it’s probably going to spike back up after Christmas. So it’s going to be a roller coaster over the next 30 days or so," said Alston.
Alson said if the 14-day positivity rate reaches 8% they'll look closer at the data and soon talk next steps with health experts about what next steps should be taken.
"I don’t think we’re there yet, again, we are monitoring, we are not waiting until it gets to 8% to monitor it," he said, "We’ll really have a good indication of what we might have to do around January, and with this new COVID virus that’s out there we’re concerned a little bit about that too."
Last year, families flocked to get tested before and after the holidays, but Steven Marshall, clinic nurse manager for COVID operations for Cone Health, said this year looks a little different.
"We are seeing the positive rate come up just a little bit, we haven’t seen the demand increase near as much as it did last year after Thanksgiving when we were still at the Green Valley site," he said.
Marshall said the healthcare provider has several appointments open across all three counties they serve, adding only about 25% of testing appointments are being filled right now.
"It’s mainly non-vaccinated and a lot of the testing that we’re doing is repeat testing for individuals that are required to be tested by their employer because they aren’t vaccinated," he said.
Alston said they have and will continue to follow the advice of medical experts on how to stop the spread of COVID-19.
"That’s the advice that we followed when we dropped the mask mandate because they said they thought it was OK to do that and if we call them back in and they see something different with their expert eyes then we’re going to act accordingly," he said.
Marshall said the demand for testing will likely pick up again in the days leading up to and following Christmas.
Cone Health is asking patients not to use the emergency department for testing because it's overrun with patients.
You can visit Cone Health urgent care sites for testing, or go to conehealth.com/testing for a list of sites.
Information is also available over the phone at 336-890-1188. There, you can get testing information for the three main counties Cone Health serves.