Mecklenburg Gets The Longer Stay-At-Home Order It Wanted

DR

As 79 of 100 North Carolina counties sit with less than 100 confirmed cases of COVID-19, Mecklenburg County Manager Dena Diorio couldn’t be happier that Governor Roy Cooper opted to extend the state’s Stay At Home order through at least May 8, even while neighboring states have started reopening certain businesses. 

Her happiness comes as the expense of surrounding counties, such as Gaston and Union, that wrote letters to Governor Cooper asking him to all counties to each set their own policies. They feel what is good for Mecklenburg shouldn’t be automatically implemented for the counties that have less than 10% of confirmed cases comparatively. 

“I absolutely understand where they’re coming from, but we have always said from the very beginning that we were going to make our decisions in Mecklenburg County based on the epidemiology that we see here locally,” Diorio said. “Again, if you look at our numbers compared to other counties surrounding us, even if you compare us to Wake (County), we have considerably more cases, we have more people here, we have more density here and so we have to look at things a little bit differently.”

As of Friday morning, there are 1,400 confirmed cases in Mecklenburg County that have resulted in 37 deaths. Some 18% of all cases locally have resulted in hospitalizations, while 60% of all confirmed cases have been released from isolation and have recovered.