The Town debuted a redesigned biweekly newsletter yesterday that is more professional and public service-oriented than any we have ever seen published before.

Gone are the notices for Outer Banks SPCA pet adoptions and for applying to serve on the Town Planning Board, or in a different volunteer capacity, even when there are no openings.

Instead, you have a “friendly reminder” that dumping “trash, landscape debris or other material” in a canal or other waterway is illegal; a link to a “recent history” of the Town’s “fund balance”; a subtle admonition about pedestrians crossing at crosswalks and walking facing oncoming traffic when they are in a road that does not have a sidewalk; and a link to “updated” 2022 beach nourishment project information.

While we would have preferred friendly articles with some context accompanying both the “friendly reminder” and the presentation of “bicycle and pedestrian laws,” we do approve of an apparent move toward providing public information and actual Town news. Next time, perhaps, the legal language could be couched in a conversational style, so that such items look less like warnings and more like inducements to community cooperation and protection of public health.

We also would like to see summarized the reports to which the newsletter’s beach-nourishment link connects so that the public does not have to pore through deadly and excessive prose submitted by the Town’s coastal engineering consultant. A set of FAQs about the project would be very helpful.

The item about the Town’s fund balance connects to an explanatory note about basic accounting and a pie chart, which shows that the unassigned fund balance as of June 30, 2019 was $4,173,321. We will not know the auditor’s 2020 assessment of the unassigned fund balance until the fall. While the explanatory note could use punching up with more details, it is a start in the right direction to have an item about the Town’s financial accountability in the newsletter.

Bravo to new Town Manager Cliff Ogburn, who is gradually putting his managerial imprint on important matters of public information.

You may check out yesterday’s redesigned newsletter here: http://www.icontact-archive.com/archive?c=765415&f=5424&s=12055&m=432630&t=5568222ac26abb9d284f1e8560139c5709e4935bd984f33bb744a90b0077a7c3

The new newsletter also encourages the public’s communication with Town Hall. At the top of the newsletter are links to the Town’s website, Facebook page, Twitter account, and general email address. At the bottom is printed the main telephone number for Town Hall, which, when called, connects you to a voice menu for departments.

We strongly urge you to subscribe to the Town newsletter, which is usually published biweekly—or, at least semimonthly—not bimonthly, as it says on the website.

TOWN OFFERS NEW REDLINED VERSION OF PROPOSED PUBLIC-ASSEMBLY ORDINANCE; Beacon Urges Town Manager to Withdraw TCA 2020-08-01 for Further Legal Review.

 Yesterday’s redesigned newsletter presented all of the information you need to be prepared for the Town Council’s Tuesday workshop meeting, which starts at 9 a.m. in the Pitts Center, including an updated “redlined” version of the proposed Town Code amendment to regulate public “assemblies.”

You may see the latest draft of Town Code Amendment (TCA) 2020-08-01 here:

https://www.southernshores-nc.gov/southern-shores-town-council-workshop-meeting-august-18-2020/toss-tca-2020-08-01-publicassemblies-vredlinetosspacket001-with-tosspacketv002/

If the Town Council actually votes upon this draft Tuesday, four of the five Council members must approve it for it to be enacted. On first reading, a Town Code amendment must be approved by a “super-majority” of the Council.

I reached out yesterday by email to Mr. Ogburn about at least one problem I had with the original draft of TCA 2020-08-01, and he was very responsive and thoughtful, as he always is. I have other concerns, but, honestly, I have not had the time to analyze the TCA in a thorough manner and to commit my analysis to writing because I was traveling last week, including yesterday when I emailed Mr. Ogburn.

I will do my best to publish something more substantive tomorrow or Monday, and I may speak to Mr. Ogburn personally. There is long-established First Amendment law that towns must adhere to when regulating public assemblies—if they want their ordinances to be constitutional—and I believe that TCA 2020-08-01 needs to be further vetted.

“There isn’t a rush to get this done,” Mr.Ogburn wrote to me in an email, “and there aren’t any events planned that I am aware of.”

In light of that, I would like to see the Town Manager withdraw TCA 2020-08-01 and subject it to further legal review by First Amendment-savvy professionals. Mr. Ogburn explained to me that the draft originated with a layperson, who used Code language from nearby beach towns as a model.

The very first paragraph of TCA 2020-08-01, which defines a public assembly, in part, as “any assembly or concert of action between or among any two or more persons” makes me stumble. I have never seen or heard of a two-person assembly nor have I seen a lawful public assembly defined in this manner. This definition definitely needs correction.

It also uses words that need to be precisely defined, including “assembly,” “protesting,” “demonstrating,” “parades,” “picketing,” and the like.

At English common law, an “unlawful assembly” could occur between three or more people who meet to commit a crime or carry out an unlawful act or unlawful purpose, or whose meeting breaches the public peace. Not only was this law established long before the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guaranteed the people the right “peaceably to assemble,” it did not pertain to “peaceable” assemblies that are lawful.

I also stumble over requiring a public assembly—whatever that means—of just 10 people to apply for a permit from the Town. That is what most of us would consider a group, not an assembly.

Ten or 15 people who gather on the South Dogwood Trail sidewalk to give out political-candidate leaflets to passersby should not have to wonder if they need to apply for a permit. They should not be so burdened. I believe more work needs to be done on the definition section and the threshold permit requirements of TCA 2020-08-01.

FIRST AMENDMENT LAW

Returning to the First Amendment law on public assemblies, which also encompasses the constitutional right to free speech—and sometimes other First Amendment protections, such as the right to “petition the Government for the redress of grievances”—it is well established that:

Governments may only impose time, place, and manner restrictions on such expressive activities. All such restrictions must be content-neutral. Governments may not directly regulate the message of the messengers who assemble peaceably in public, nor may they do so indirectly by leaving permit decisions up to the sole discretion of a public official who may act in a biased manner.

Permissible time, place, and manner restrictions include, for example:

*Imposing limits on the noise level of the speech by the protesters, demonstrators, picketers, etc.

*Capping the number of protesters who may occupy a given public forum, such as the parking lot at Town Hall.

*Barring early-morning or late-evening demonstrations.

*Restricting the size or placement of signs on government property.

These restrictions also may take the form of requirements to obtain a permit for an assembly, as TCA 2020-08-01 imposes.

To survive a First Amendment constitutional challenge, time, place, and manner restrictions—such as those in TCA 2020-08-01—must meet a three-prong test set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781 (1989).

First, the challenged regulation must be content-neutral.

Second, it must be “narrowly tailored” to serve a “significant governmental interest.”

Third, it must leave open ample alternative channels for communicating the speaker’s message.

This test balances the people’s First Amendment rights with important government interests, such as its police-power interests of  protecting public safety, health, and welfare.

As you might imagine, it is the second-prong of the test that is usually the “rub.”

To be narrowly tailored, a time-place-manner restriction need not be the least restrictive or least intrusive means for a government to achieve its objective. That said, the interest that the government seeks to protect must be “significant.”

For example, the Town can require a permit for parades in public streets, given a foreseeable adverse impact on vehicle traffic, but it cannot categorically ban parades in such a manner as to allow them only when streets are bereft of onlookers.

The Town has a significant interest in maintaining public safety, which may involve keeping streets open and traffic moving. But the Supreme Court has also held that local authorities may not break up public protests simply because they slow traffic, inconvenience pedestrians, are annoying, or make people angry.

The Town also cannot require a permit for a protest on a public sidewalk that would not significantly burden or disrupt pedestrian or vehicle traffic.

There are nuances to consider in drafting a public-assembly ordinance that passes constitutional muster, and I believe that the Town Manager needs to spend more time with legal advisers on TCA 2020-08-01 to ensure that it is such an ordinance.

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 8/15/20

 The Southern Shores Town Council will consider a proposed Town Code ordinance to impose a permitting process and other regulations on all public assemblies of more than 10 people on public property—including parades, picketing, and other demonstrations—at its workshop meeting next Tuesday at 9 a.m. in the Pitts Center.

If enacted by the Town Council, proposed Town Code Amendment (TCA) 2020-08-01 also would prohibit certain acts during public assemblies, such as the carrying of firearms or other deadly weapons and other threats to public health or safety and to the rights of private property owners.

In his summary of TCA 2020-08-11, Town Manager Cliff Ogburn writes that:

“The Town currently does not have any ordinance to address Public Assembly Gatherings, leaving the town vulnerable, especially under current conditions throughout the United States. This Ordinance will give the town the ability to have some control and provide a clear process for those that may want to express their Constitutional Rights peacefully.”

It appears that this Town Code amendment is at the request of Southern Shores Police Chief David Kole, who has brought up in Town Council meetings the prospect of protests on the Outer Banks similar to those occurring around the country.

(Recently, we read on the social-media site, Next Door, a suggestion by a Southern Shores homeowner that a demonstration on behalf of police be held in town, as a response to what some perceive as anti-police demonstrations elsewhere. Our first thought was about the requisite permit process, and we are surprised that none exists.)

The U.S. Supreme Court has settled through a series of decisions the tension between the exercise of citizens’ First Amendment rights to free speech and to peaceful assembly and the government’s right to regulate that exercise in order to ensure public health, safety, and welfare.

All five clauses of the First Amendment protect what is a fundamental right of Americans to protest peaceably. Clearly, if public protests threaten law and order, the State (the government in all of its forms) has a responsibility to intervene.

Supreme Court decision-making instructs that the government may regulate the conduct of public assemblies, but not the content of the speech that is being expressed.

There are a few narrow categories of expression that the Supreme Court has determined are not protected by the First Amendment, such as fighting words and incitements to imminent law-breaking, but most messages are constitutionally protected.

In regulating conduct of public assemblies, the government may impose reasonable “time, place, and manner regulations,” and it is those regulations that underlie permit applications and processes.

Where does a permit applicant propose to have the public assembly? On what date and during which hours? How many people are expected to participate? What do they propose to do? Who is sponsoring the public assembly?

TCA 2020-08-01 specifies that an application for a public assembly permit must be made in writing to the town at least 48 hours before the event.

(As a former attorney, I have studied constitutional law, but I am not a First Amendment scholar. I do know permits are not required for “spontaneous protests” in response to breaking news, as was the case with the protests after George Floyd’s death.)

In skimming TCA 2020-08-01, I saw some potential red flags of over-regulation, but I would have to consult a First Amendment lawyer in order to confidently argue that they should be removed. The Town must have reasonable grounds for believing that its time, place, and manner regulations are for the purpose of protecting the public. Mere speculation is not sufficient.

You may read the proposed ordinance on pp. 40-55 of the Town Council meeting packet at https://www.southernshores-nc.gov/wp-content/uploads/minutes-agendas-newsletters/Meeting-Packet_2020-08-18.pdf.

You may access just the agenda here: https://www.southernshores-nc.gov/wp-content/uploads/minutes-agendas-newsletters/Agendas_2020-08-18.pdf

The Council’s meetings are open to members of the public who wear masks and practice social distancing. You are free to attend Tuesday’s meeting, under those conditions.

You also may join the meeting on Zoom, using the meeting ID 912 3721 9720, passcode 635026.

In order to participate via Zoom, you must first download the Zoom software to your computer’s hard drive. Zoom is online at https://zoom.us. The website URL provided by the Town in its notice will not work unless you have already downloaded the software.

DUKE FACE-MASK ‘STUDY’ IS JUST A LIMITED DEMONSTRATION

The face-mask efficacy “study” conducted by a multidisciplinary team of Duke University scientists that we thought would be fun to plunge into turns out to be a one-speaker “demonstration” whose significance is qualified by quite a few limitations.

It always pays to read the scientific paper underlying a report that makes the news. This one, which proposes to evaluate the effectiveness of various face masks and coverings in reducing the spread of respiratory droplets containing coronaviruses, does not impress us.

According to the researchers themselves, their “measurements provide a quick and cost-effective way to estimate the efficacy of masks for retaining droplets emitted during speech for droplet sizes larger than 0.5 [microns].

As they write: “Our proof-of-principle experiments only involved a small number of speakers[—actually just one for the 14 masks they tested—]but our setup can serve as a base for future studies with a larger cohort of speakers and checks of mask performance under a variety of conditions that affect the droplet emission rate, like different speakers, volume of speech, speech patterns, and other effects.”

We think we will wait for the future studies that account for all of the limiting variables.

In brief, here is how the researchers—who represent Duke’s departments of psychology and neuroscience, chemistry, physics, radiology, biomedical engineering, and medicine—set up their experiment, and we quote:

“[A]n operator wears a face mask and speaks into the direction of an expanded laser beam inside a dark enclosure. [The respiratory] droplets that propagate through the laser beam scatter light, which is recorded with a cell phone camera. A simple computer algorithm is used to count the droplets in the video.”

Each of the 14 masks tested underwent 10 trials with the same speaker. As we reported yesterday, a fitted nonvalved N95 mask and a surgical mask prevented the most droplets from becoming airborne, and a bandana and fleece gaiter performed the poorest.

The Duke demonstration also showed that a cotton-polypropylene-cotton facial covering provided more protection than five different pure cotton masks that differed in terms of layers and style. It further supported the proposition that a valved N95 mask decreases the protection of people near the wearer, but does not compromise the wearer’s protection.

If you would like to read the experiment report, you may access it at https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/08/07/sciadv.abd3083.

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 8/12/20

A Dare County man in the 65-or-older age group who has been hospitalized is among the 15 people who have tested positive locally for COVID-19 since last Friday, according to the Dare County Dept. of Health and Human Services, which issued an update today.

The local man’s hospitalization outside of the area was reported by the DCDHHS Sunday. On Saturday the DCDHHS reported that another Dare County man, who is between the ages of 50 and 64, also had to be hospitalized for COVID-19.

Of the 13 other new COVID-19 cases diagnosed since last Friday’s DCDHHS update, 12 are nonresidents; and of these 12, the DCDHHS reported today, 11 acquired the virus by direct contact with an individual who either tested positive outside of Dare County (seven) or acquired the virus outside of Dare County (four).

The mode of transmission of the thirteenth is unclear, an “indication” of community spread, according to the DCDHHS.

We frankly do not understand how useful it is to the Dare County public to know that a nonresident had direct contact with a person who “tested positive for COVID-19” outside of Dare County, as opposed to direct contact with a person “who acquired the virus” outside of Dare County. The DCDHHS should explain this distinction, if it is significant.

The Beacon reported Friday on the seven nonresidents whose positive COVID-19 test results made the DCDHHS dashboard that day. Another non-resident case was reported on the dashboard yesterday.

The COVID-19 cases of the four remaining nonresidents, including two who are age 17 or younger, were reported today. These two young people are isolating in Dare County. Today’s other two cases transferred to isolation in their home counties. One is between the ages of 18 and 24, and the other is between the ages of 50 and 64.

The total number of COVID-19 cases diagnosed in Dare County is now 384, of whom 210 are residents and 174 nonresidents.

There currently are two Dare County residents and two nonresidents hospitalized for COVID-19, according to the DCDHHS dashboard.

SORRY, KIDS, BANDANAS DON’T CUT IT

Duke University researchers tested 14 different face masks or mask alternatives to find out how effective they are in reducing the transmission of respiratory droplets during regular speech and discovered that fitted N95 masks and surgical masks worn by healthcare workers are the most effective and “mask alternatives, such as neck fleece or bandanas, offer very little protection.”

Neck fleeces—also called gaiters—actually provided worse protection than not wearing a mask at all because they dispersed the wearer’s largest respiratory droplets into “a multitude of smaller droplets,” the research team wrote in its study report, and “smaller particles are airborne longer than large droplets,” which sink faster.

The Duke study, titled “Low-Cost Measurement of Facemask Efficacy for Filtering Expelled Droplets During Speech,” was published online Aug. 7 in Science Advances, and may be accessed at https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/08/07/sciadv.abd3083.

We will give more details tomorrow about the Duke study, which used a simple, inexpensive optical measurement method to evaluate the masks. Amateur physicists can easily re-create their experimental setup.

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 8/11/20

 

A Dare County man has been hospitalized with COVID-19, and another local man is in home isolation after testing positive for the disease caused by the new coronavirus, according to a 6:30 p.m. report today by the Dare County Dept. of Health and Human Services. Both men are between the ages of 50 and 64.

In a blog that The Beacon posted at 6 p.m. today, we reported that seven nonresidents had tested positive for COVID-19 and been transferred to isolation in their home counties, according to yesterday’s DCDHHS dashboard, but no cases had been posted on the dashboard today.

It never fails. If it weren’t such an absurd proposition, we would think someone in the county health department was reading The Beacon and waiting to update case results after we filed our reports.

The two new COVID-19 cases today bring the total number diagnosed in Dare County to 378 people: 209 Dare County residents and 169 nonresidents. There currently are two Dare County residents, and two nonresidents, hospitalized outside of the area.

Please see The Beacon on 8/7/20 for details about a COVID-19 diagnostic and antibody testing event this Tuesday in Kill Devil Hills. An appointment is required.

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 8/9/20

The Town Council met in emergency session last Monday for 10 minutes in order to approve contracts for debris monitoring and to cancel its regular 5:30 p.m. meeting on Aug. 4. The Council postponed all remaining business on the regular-meeting agenda until its Aug. 18 workshop meeting at 9 a.m. in the Pitts Center.

(The Beacon earlier reported that the Town Council would meet Aug. 4, not Aug. 3, in emergency session. We misread the Town’s notice and apologize for this error.)

The Beacon previewed on 8/2/20 the Aug. 4 agenda that was postponed and will do so again, along with additional business items for the workshop. Today we wish only to point out again that the You Tube videotape of the emergency meeting is—like so many other Town Council meeting videotapes and Zoom sessions before it—deficient because Town staff and Council members do not give enough thought to whether they are audible or not.

The Town’s meeting videotapes during the pandemic have played like bad home movies from the 1970s when everyone had to ask: “What happened to the sound?”

This time, the placement of the tables at which the Council members have become accustomed to sitting behind actually resulted in obscuring the camera’s view of two of the Council members. Both Councilmen Leo Holland and Matt Neal appear headless on the videotape.

Now, we’re talking about bad still photos from the 1960s when annoying relatives deliberately took shots of people’s feet because they thought it was funny.

The problem is a matter of simple physics. The stationary camera at the front of the Pitts Center meeting room cannot shoot through the two solid computer monitors hanging in front of it. (You know, they are the screens that display graphics and other data for meetings.)

The two monitors appear as two large black rectangular objects on the videotape. They are always there, but this time one large black rectangular object obliterated Mr. Holland’s head; and the other obliterated Mr. Neal’s head.

The object obliterating Mr. Neal’s head also wiped out the one audience member present, who was identified as a journalist, but not by name. She could not be seen at all.

Town Manager Cliff Ogburn continues to speak during Town Council meetings with his back to the camera. We do not know precisely how the sound system works, but we know we have to strain to hear what Mr. Ogburn says and are fortunate to pick up 50 percent of his words.

If the Southern Shores public needs to hear anyone, it is Mr. Ogburn. He should be easily visible and audible in every videotape and Zoom session.

But Mr. Ogburn’s 50 percent is plentiful, compared to the number of audible words spoken by Deputy Town Manager/Planning Director Wes Haskett, who, since the new Town Manager’s arrival, has moved off-camera altogether.

Please, Mr. Haskett, if the camera is going to stay where it is, position yourself in front of it, near where Town Councilman Jim Conners sits, so we can see and possibly hear you. You are the second person that the Southern Shores public wants to hear.

To accommodate the public, the rest of the meeting room must be altered along with position of the Town Council members and their tables. That means, in particular, that the lectern before which people stand when they make public comments and the microphone into which they speak must be moved on-camera.

Disembodied, nearly inaudible voices by people who often don’t identify themselves don’t cut it for an open meeting. And that is what we too often have.

Please, Council and staff, play to the audience, not to each other.

TACO BELL OPENS:  A reader contacted us today to report that the traffic heading into the new Taco Bell at the Southern Shores Marketplace last night was backed up into U.S. Hwy. 158. We received no other details.

Unlike the drive-through fast-food restaurants across the highway in Kitty Hawk, the Taco Bell cannot be accessed by a side street. It does not take much of a drive-through line for traffic to back up into the busy thoroughfare.

The Beacon reported on the history of Taco Bell’s arrival—which necessitated a change in town law to allow drive-through businesses on small lots—on 7/15/20.

The former site of Nu-Quality ice cream and the current site of Taco Bell—5415 N. Croatan Hwy.— is only 18,260 square feet, or 0.42 acres.

In 2017 when “5415 OBX-LLC,” the limited liability company of ice-cream proprietor Spiro Giannakopoulos, bought the lot, the Southern Shores Town Code prohibited drive-through businesses on lots smaller than 2.5 acres.

Having attended all of the Town Planning Board and Town Council meetings about amending the Town Code to permit a Nu-Quality ice cream shop on the site, we can tell you that the only town official concerned about traffic problems in the foreseeable future was former Councilman Fred Newberry. Everyone else was pro-ice cream and uninterested in traffic, which, of course, was the reason the law existed as it did.

Former Councilman Christopher Nason was the architect for the Nu-Quality building.

Mr. Giannakopoulos talked about becoming a member of the Southern Shores community, but Nu-Quality was in business here less than two years.

Mr. Giannakopoulos’s LLC bought the lot three years ago for $275,000. It sold the property in June to Restaurant Property Investors IV, LLC, of Virginia Beach, for $1.2 million.

That’s a lot of cones.

LOCAL COVID-19 UPDATE: Dare County reported yesterday that seven people tested positive locally for COVID-19, all of them nonresidents who have transferred to isolation in their home counties.

They are two men between the ages of 25 and 49; one man ages 50 to 64; and four women between the ages of 50 and 64.

The Dare County health department had not reported any new COVID-19 cases today as of 6 p.m.

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 8/9/20

Good afternoon, everybody.

The northbound cut-through traffic has been steady since about 8:30 a.m.

Homeowner Ursula Bateman reports that Sea Oats Trail was backed up as of 10:25 a.m.

We spent much of the morning on the oceanside. The traffic on Duck Road was heavy and moving about 5 mph between the lights.

Please let us know what the conditions are in your stretch of Southern Shores.

Summer is far from over.

THE BEACON, 8/8/20

 

 

Since Tuesday, when the DCDHHS last posted a case update, nine people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in Dare County, four residents and five nonresidents.

Unfortunately, two of the nonresidents are women age 65 or older who have been hospitalized outside of the area. A third is a woman age 65 or older who is isolating in Dare County.

The other two nonresidents are between the ages of 50 and 64. They have transferred to isolation in their home counties.

The four Dare County residents are all between the ages of 25 and 49 and are in home isolation.

Yesterday the DCDHHS dashboard reported that a resident who previously had been diagnosed with COVID-19 and had been isolating at home had to be hospitalized. Dr. Sheila Davies, director of the DCDHHS, reported today that the person is in a hospital outside of Dare County.

According to Dr. Davies, all four of the newly diagnosed residents acquired the virus by unclear means, indicating community spread. Three of the five nonresidents acquired the virus by unclear means, she said, and the other two had direct contact with an infected person outside of Dare County.

This is the first time that The Beacon can recall that nearly 80 percent of the new COVID-19 cases have been presumably acquired by community spread. Usually, the direct contact-versus-community spread ratio with new cases is about one-to-one, with half being attributed to each source.

TESTING EVENT NEXT TUESDAY IN KDH

Dare County is partnering again with Mako Medical Laboratories of Raleigh to hold a diagnostic and antibody COVID-19 testing event next Tuesday, starting at 1 p.m., at the Dare County Parks and Recreation facility, 602 Mustian St., in Kill Devil Hills.

You must register for an appointment to take either or both tests. Call 252-575-5008, Monday through Friday, from 8:30a.m. to 5 p.m., for scheduling. Participants are required to send in a photocopy of their government-issued identification card and any insurance card that they have before the event. (Email covid19@darenc.com.)

The specimen for the COVID-19 diagnostic test is obtained on a drive-through basis:  You remain in your vehicle while a health worker does a nasal swab. The antibody test requires you to go into the Parks and Recreation facility to have a blood sample drawn.

Although this event is not free, people with insurance will not incur any out-of-pocket cost for either COVID-19 test. Mako Medical Labs will use the COVID-19 Relief Fund to pay for diagnostic testing of uninsured persons and will work with them on the costs of the antibody testing. If you are uninsured, you may find out more about uncovered costs when you call the call center to make an appointment.

The test results from the event will be sent by Mako within 72 hours to the Dare County Dept. of Health and Human Services, which will notify all participants.

This testing is only for people who do not have symptoms of COVID-19. If you are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, such as a fever, a cough, shortness of breath, and/or a loss of taste or smell, you should contact your healthcare provider.

See notice at https://www.darenc.com/Home/Components/News/News/6543/1483

LINK TO GOVERNOR’S EXECUTIVE ORDER 155, which extends Phase Two of North Carolina’s reopening for five weeks, until 5 p.m. on Sept. 11: https://files.nc.gov/governor/documents/files/EO155-Extension-of-Phase-2.pdf.

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 8/7/20

“Laboratory-reporting omissions” during the past four days apparently accounted for the recent declining trend in single-day case reports statewide, according to a notice posted online today by the N.C. Dept. of Health and Human Services.

A correction of the mistake resulted today in a more than 75-percent increase in single-day laboratory-confirmed cases over yesterday’s single-day total, as the NCDHHS reported 1,979 new cases and a positivity rate of 6.4 percent.

Since yesterday, 42 more people have died as a result of COVID-19, for a total of 2,092 fatalities.

COVID-19-related hospitalizations, which the NCDHHS announced recently in another data correction had been underreported, dropped today to 1,147 from 1,167 yesterday.

The subject of the “turnaround time” for COVID-19 tests came up during the media portion of Governor Roy Cooper’s briefing yesterday afternoon, in which he announced a five-week extension of Phase Two in North Carolina’s reopening.

The five-week extension marks the third time that the Governor has “paused” Phase Two since he implemented the phase on May 22.

Test-result turnaround time is critical to effective contact tracing, and contact tracing is critical to assessing the spread of COVID-19, which has an incubation period of from two to 14 days.

“Different labs have different turnaround times,” HHS Secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen said yesterday in response to a reporter’s question about delayed test results.

Although Dr. Cohen said the “overall” turnaround time for test results statewide is three to four days, she also acknowledged that some laboratories are taking as long as six to seven days.

North Carolina has joined a bipartisan purchasing coalition with at least six other states, including Maryland and Virginia, that plans to buy 3.5 million COVID-19 tests that deliver diagnostic results in 15 minutes.

The rapid antigen tests, which are being manufactured by Becton, Dickinson and Co. of New Jersey and Quidel Corp. of California, are reportedly not as sensitive as those done in labs, but they are cheaper in addition to being much quicker.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, negotiated the test purchase deal during the final days of his term as chairman of the National Governors Assn., which ended yesterday. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, now steps into this role.

“With severe shortages and delays in testing and the federal administration attempting to cut funding for testing,” Hogan said in a statement Tuesday, “the states are banding together to acquire millions of faster tests to help save lives and slow the spread of COVID-19.”

So far, four states led by Democratic governors have joined the coalition: Louisiana, Michigan, Virginia, and North Carolina. The other three members are Republican-led Massachusetts, Ohio, and Maryland.

“Testing is key to slowing the spread of COVID-19,” Governor Cooper said yesterday, “and I’m proud to work with other governors on this plan to expand testing in North Carolina.”

North Carolina is expected to buy 500,000 rapid-antigen tests or one-seventh of the 3.5 million tests purchased by the coalition, according to today’s Raleigh News & Observer.

An antigen is a toxin or other foreign substance—such as a bacterium or a virus—that induces an immune response in the human body, especially the production of antibodies to fight the antigen.

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 8/6/20

 

North Carolina “will remain paused in Stay-at-Home Phase Two for five more weeks”—until 5 p.m. on Sept. 11—Governor Roy Cooper announced at a 4 p.m. briefing today.

While the COVID-19 metrics tracked by the N.C. Dept. of Health and Human Services are “overall stabilizing,” HHS Secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen said before the Governor announced the extension, “We still have much work to do.”

Dr. Cohen characterized the statewide indicators of the single-day number of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 tests, the single-day number of COVID-19-related hospitalizations, and the positivity rate (which, she said, is “hovering near 7 to 8 percent”), as either starting to stabilize or to “level off,” but as still being too high.

Secretary Cohen “has a glimmer of hope,” she said, because she “sees subtle signs of progress.”

Later in the briefing, she advised people to “hold on to that hope.”

“Stable is good,” the Governor said after listening to Dr. Cohen’s report, “but declining is better.”

Then he added: “Stabile is fragile.”

With public schools K-12 and public colleges and universities reopening this month, either with a combination of in-person and remote learning, or with just remote learning, both the Governor and Dr. Cohen endorsed a five-week extension of Phase Two, rather than a three-week extension, as was done with the executive order currently in effect.

Executive Order 151 expires at 5 p.m. Friday. We will post a link to the new executive order when it is available online.

(Dare County public schools pre-K-12 are reopening with 100 percent remote learning. The first day of school is Aug. 17.)

The extra two weeks, Dr. Cohen explained, will give State officials time to evaluate the impact of reopening schools—especially higher-educational campuses—on COVID-19 transmission and case numbers and “to look at trends as we go forward.”

The Secretary specifically acknowledged an increased risk of viral spread associated with college and university campuses, where students who come from all over the country gather and may mingle—with or without wearing masks and/or observing social distancing.

“Any type of gathering of people has risk,” she said, not just campus gatherings. “The virus is with us. It is in our communities.”

On Monday, North Carolina arrived at “the solemn benchmark” of 2,000 COVID-19-related deaths, the Governor observed at the start of the briefing, which lasted only 15 minutes before he started taking questions from the media.

As he does at every press conference, the Governor sought to individualize everyone who has died and to express his condolences to their loved ones, describing the fatalities as “North Carolinians who are missed dearly.”

As of today, the number of COVID-19-related deaths statewide is 2,050.

North Carolina has recorded a total of 129,288 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases, the Governor said, reciting NCDHHS data—1,127 of them today. There currently are 1,167 people hospitalized with the disease.

The positivity rate today was 5.7 percent, which is closer to the 5 percent that Dr. Cohen would like to see.

Saying he earlier today had visited Hurricane Isaias-devastated Bertie County, where two people died and dozens of others were injured, Governor Cooper reflected that “A hurricane on top of a pandemic is cruel.”

Both the Governor and Dr. Cohen attributed the declining, but still elevated, number of people presenting to emergency departments statewide with Covid-like symptoms, and the stabilizing of the other disease metrics to mandatory mask-wearing.

“We know what works,” Dr. Cohen said.

Although “our cases are still too high,” she continued “. . .  hard work [has been achieved] with face coverings.”

The Secretary also said it is “time to double-down on the simple strategies” of the three Ws: wearing a mask; waiting six feet behind someone; and washing hands frequently.

“Keep wearing your mask,” she stressed.

Asked by a member of the media whether he thought that North Carolina would progress into Phase Three before a vaccine becomes available, the Governor replied: “I hope that we will.”

“If people will do the things that we keep telling them to do,” he said, “we can definitely decrease the numbers.”

The extended pause in Phase Two means that bars, gyms, fitness centers, movie theaters, entertainment arcades, and other close-contact venues will remain closed, and restaurants will continue operating at a reduced capacity.

“Bars are high-transmission areas,” the Governor said in responding to a question from the media about the late-night drinking curfew he imposed.

In an executive order that took effect last Friday at 11 p.m., the Governor sought to prevent “restaurants from turning into bars after hours,” he said, by restricting the indoor sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.

See Executive Order 153 at https://files.nc.gov/governor/documents/files/EO-153-Restricting-Late-Night-Service-of-Alcoholic-Beverages.pdf

The Governor and Dr. Cohen also confirmed that State officials are continuing to discuss with the Republican National Committee the possibility of holding a “safe convention” in Charlotte later this month.

COVID-19 IN DARE COUNTY

The Beacon gave an update yesterday on COVID-19 in Dare County, before Dr. Sheila Davies, director of the Dept. of Health and Human Services, analyzed the latest cases. We elaborate today.

Thirteen people tested positive for the disease between Friday and yesterday—six of them Dare County residents and seven of them nonresidents. All of the 13 newly diagnosed people are in home isolation.

In her update yesterday, Dr. Davies attributed six of the new COVID-19 cases to direct-contact transmission and seven to “unclear” transmission, an indication of “community spread.”

Of the six people who acquired the virus by direct contact, four of them did so outside of Dare County, she said.

Dr. Davies also reported that all six of the new resident cases are symptomatic, while only four of the seven non-resident cases are.

See https://www.darenc.com/Home/Components/News/News/6532/1483

While we were writing this report, three more COVID-19-confirmed cases were reported on the DCDHHS dashboard: two residents and one non-resident. The residents are both between the ages of 25 and 49 and are in home isolation. The nonresident is a woman age 65 or older who has been hospitalized.

As of today, 363 COVID-19 cases have been diagnosed in Dare County, 205 residents and 158 nonresidents. The age breakdown of the 363 cases is as follows:

51 are age 17 and under;

86 are between the ages of 18 and 24;

130 are between the ages of 25 and 49;

57 are between the ages of 50 and 64;

39 are age 65 or older

Dr. Davies’s next case update will be Friday.

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 8/5/20

Pass the word. We saw a lot of recycling cans at the roadside yesterday already.

The Town announced on Monday–and we twice reported–that recycling pickup would occur tomorrow, not today.

If you would like to be on the Town’s email list, so you will receive its biweekly newsletter and any bulletins it issues, just call Town Hall and ask to be added.

THE BEACON, 8/5/20