On Tuesday, WFMY News 2 sat down for a one-on-one interview with Governor Roy Cooper - remotely, of course - to get answers to some of your most pressing questions regarding the coronavirus and its impact.
Question: We are seeing some instances where folks will go to the nursing home and stand outside of the window to talk with someone inside... Or they’ll have drive-by birthday parades for their child. Is this allowed under the stay at home order? What would you advise on this type of thing?
Answer: "You know, when you’re providing help to someone, assistance to someone, and certainly when you’re going to lift the spirits of your parents or grandparents in the rest home, or nursing home, I think that this is a good enough reason to leave the home for an essential purpose.
"In fact, we’ve seen a lot of wonderful stories of grandchildren being able to make signs and to communicate with their grandparents in the rest home and nursing home. I think that this is a positive thing, and particularly if people continue their social distancing. What they’re doing, being outside, is trying to provide emotional uplift and emotional bond with that person in the nursing home while at the same time, protecting them because we know that visitors can bring in this virus. People can be asymptomatic. We know that once that virus gets in there, it’s very difficult for people… We’ve seen some mass infections this way.
"So I think that’s a positive way to interact with parents and grandparents and just continue to be careful with social distancing. You know, we will defeat this virus with compassion and commitment. The commitment part is committing to stay at home and committing to social distancing. That is compassion toward yourself, your family and other people that you could transmit the virus to."
Question: Will students go back to school on May 18th?
Answer: "Parents and children will deserve an answer soon, as to what we plan to do about our public schools.
"Let me just take a second to tell you how proud I am of North Carolina teachers, teacher assistance, cafeteria workers, bus drivers - who are working so hard to provide as much remote learning as they possibly can to their school children and also to provide nutritious meals to them. Our schools are centers of our community, and in many communities the education leaders have pulled together, and teachers have pulled together to continue to help the children.
"But we know that it’s been a while since they’ve been back to school and we know that decisions are going to be made soon. We will consult with public health experts and data analysts. We will consult with education leaders and parent groups and we will be making a decision soon on that."
Question: Are you planning to extend or lift the stay-at-home order?
Answer: "To lift the stay at home order and the restrictions we have in place right now would be catastrophic and the data tells us this. If we lifted everything right now, it is pretty certain that our hospitals would be overwhelmed, our ICU beds would be overwhelmed. So that is irresponsible.
"I think it is going to be very important for us the next two weeks to really push hard on staying at home, and keeping our social distance and abiding by these restrictions. However, the order runs out at the end of April, and we are going to have to make decisions about whether that order will be extended, or whether it will be modified.
"We are going to consult with health experts, data analysts, business leaders to determine whether we can ease some of these restrictions. We are going to be looking at things like the number of people that have been infected, what our testing capacity is, the number of people who have died, the number of beds, ICU beds and ventilators that we have, the personal protective equipment that we have for our healthcare officials. All of the things that we will be looking at to make decisions very soon about reopening North Carolina.
"A lot of people are out of a job for the very first time in their lives, a lot of small businesses are hanging by a thread and that is why we are pushing so hard to get unemployment benefits and help to small businesses in North Carolina. We have to keep public safety and the public health of the people first but understanding that we do need to ease restrictions if we possibly can in order to get our economy moving again.
"We will be making those decisions soon and announcing a plan to get North Carolina back to work in a safe way and in a way that we know that we can continue to save lives, keep our social distance. This virus is going to be with us until we have a vaccine. So we’re going to have to have a long-term plan about building back our economy while at the same time working to keep people safe."
