March 15. The volume of new COVID cases rose to 649 today as the pandemic tests the waters of endemic status. Hospitalizations fell again, to 832 statewide. Deaths fell to five statewide, still a painful number for survivors

Testing

The statewide positivity rate remained at 2.6 percent for a second day as per NCDHHS. The Mecklenburg 14-day trailing average also stayed flat at 3.8 percent.

Mecklenburg (change from Monday)

There were 44 new COVID cases reported countywide.

North Mecklenburg (change from Monday)

• Cornelius: 1 new case, 6,727 cumulative total, 35 deaths cumulative total.

• Davidson: 1 new case, 4,084 cumulative total, 21 deaths cumulative total.

• Huntersville: 7 new cases, 15,205 cumulative total, 89 deaths cumulative total.

Pandemic or endemic?

Tara Krk Sell/JHU Photo

“There won’t be a clean end to the pandemic but it will stop being so front-and-center. As cases go down, protective measures will wane. At certain points, there will be surges in cases and some efforts to reduce spread of disease, like masking, may come back into our lives temporarily. Additional booster shots might be needed, and some people will get them, but like influenza vaccines, many in the U.S. won’t or will never have gotten vaccinated in the first place and so there will also be occasional surges in hospitals. But while we return to mostly normal life, some things won’t go back to normal—trust in public health has taken a hit. Health-related misinformation is more powerful than ever.

—Tara Kirk Sell, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

The NCDHHS posted today’s COVID data after our deadline.