Cumberland County was not spared the Covid-19 summer spike experienced by states across the country this summer.
How big was the spike?
We no longer know exactly.
While the state and county have estimates of cases, long gone are the days where residents would get a phone call from a state or county contact tracer. North Carolina’s Dept. of Health and Human Services stopped counting individual Covid-19 cases over a year ago.
“We’re working to kind of normalize our Covid response,” said Dr. Jennifer Green, director of Cumberland County’s Dept. of Public Health. “Covid is not going away, so we kind of are in this posture where it’s becoming part of our normal response with our other respiratory viruses.”
Rather than dashboards showing each individual Covid-19 case, the state and Cumberland County Dept. of Public Health uses three metrics to measure Covid-19 rates: hospitalizations, emergency room visits and the amount of virus particles found in wastewater. The more of each, the larger the spike. Any cases self-reported to the county’s health department are monitored by its epidemiology team and included in the estimates.
“We are in a different place with Covid-19 than we were during the pandemic,” a spokesperson for NCDHHS said. “A high percentage of the population has some protective immunity against Covid-19 and we have the tools — including vaccination, testing and treatment — to manage Covid-19 as we do for other common respiratory illnesses.”
Part of normalizing Covid-19 is thinking about vaccinations as regular, annual occurrences, like those for the flu, said Green. While caused by different viruses, both flu and Covid-19 mutate over time. For Covid-19, these mutations create new variants, such as Omicron or FLiRT, and require slightly different vaccines that help the body fight against their new qualities.
Treating Covid-19 like the flu can mean it takes equal amounts of reminders to get people to go out and get vaccinated before the fall brings higher rates of respiratory illnesses (and the lines for the immunizations get long, Green said).
“We want people to remember to get the vaccine,” Green said. “I know that feels a little trite, but truly the best thing that we can do for the fall for respiratory virus season is to get your vaccines.”
Both this year’s Covid-19 and flu vaccines are available at the health department — free of charge for all adults, regardless of insurance status — on a walk-in basis. The department will also include Covid-19 vaccines in immunization events like the upcoming back-to-school immunization event on Aug. 13. Vaccines for anyone under the age of 18 are covered under the Federal Vaccines for Children Program if not eligible for coverage through insurance.
The Covid-19 vaccine, however, is not required for K-12 children by North Carolina law. In February 2023, the N.C. House of Representatives introduced H.B. 98 which prohibits public schools, state and local public health agencies, state and local public health officials and local governments from requiring a Covid-19 vaccination. While the bill passed on July 8, it morphed between its third edition and the one that passed, and no longer addresses vaccine requirements. Employers can still require Covid-19 vaccines in North Carolina unless the employee falls under a medical or religious exemption.
Masking is also not widely required anymore, though encouraged by Green for those feeling sick. The passage of H.B. 237 in June, a bill that drew significant controversy, made it a higher misdemeanor or felony if a person “wore a mask or other clothing or device that concealed or attempted to conceal the person’s identity at the time of the offense” but leaves exemptions, including masking to prevent the spread of communicable diseases like Covid-19.
Much of what was once required during the pandemic, whether that be vaccines, masking or testing, is now left to the discretion of the individual. The county health department has at-home testing kits available.
“We still want you to take those preventive measures. We don’t want people to forget that people still die due to Covid every day around the world and that people still get sick and people still get hospitalized,” Green said.
More changes to Covid-19 policies could be on the horizon as the health department searches for money to cover what was once funded by the federal government. Federal Covid-19 response funds started to taper out once the federal government declared the emergency ended on May 11, 2023. The largest source of funds for Cumberland County ran dry this May.
Without these funds, the county could lack the means to pay for tests, staff and vaccines, said Green. However, the county commissioners have approved the department’s fee waiver for the Covid-19 vaccine the past two years for uninsured or underinsured individuals, as it has historically done for the flu vaccine.
“We need more communicable disease funding at the state and federal level,” Green said. “We need more dollars for environmental health across the spectrum. So we don’t want people to lose sight of that to say, ‘OK, public health, you just fade into the background until the next thing comes and then we’ll bring it back out, and then you’ll fade away.’ We don’t want people to do that. We want people to know that we’re still here and relevant.”
CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the CityView News Fund.