The percentage of daily positive COVID-19 cases in North Carolina continues to drop, with Saturday’s updated metrics provided by the state’s Department of Health and Human Services.
The rate had been in the teens as recently as last week, but Saturday’s report showed the percent positive rate at 6.5%.
The state goal, which it has not achieved since the fall of 2020, is to be below 5%.
The updated metrics showed another 77 new deaths from the virus, bringing the total count to 10,453 since March. More than 4,130 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the past 24 hours.
The new report also showed that 50 fewer people were hospitalized across the state with the virus.
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Note: The numbers we show you every day mean everything in how our community recovers from coronavirus -- both in terms of healthcare and the economy -- but they don’t mean much without the proper context and as much transparency as possible.
New cases vary day by day based on a lot of factors. That can include how long it takes to get results back, so a new case reported today can really be several days old.
The other big metric we watch is the percent of positive cases. This is data we can only get from the state because it’s not as simple as factoring a percent of new cases each day from the number of tests. That’s because test results take days and come from a variety of places.