The NC Threat-Free Index and Immunity Update for the Week Ending April 23 | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the John Locke Foundation. The author of this post is Jon Sanders.

    This past week about 99.9% of people in NC were estimated to pose no threat of passing along Covid-19 to anyone. Also, the seven-day rolling averages of hospitalizations and deaths remain at their lowest levels since early April of 2020. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is no longer reporting daily Covid data, instead giving only weekly updates.

    As of today, DHHS shows the following:


    Also, White House chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci, fresh off publicly being surprised by finding out about the checks and balances in the U.S. constitutional system of government, has suddenly declared the U.S. "out of the pandemic phase."

    So it follows that Gov. Roy Cooper has determined to keep North Carolina under a State of Emergency until at least July 15, 2022.

    Here is the NC Threat-Free Index for the week ending April 23. All of the statistics generated for the NC Threat-Free Index are based on numbers provided by government sources. This link gives a detailed explanation of how each statistic is derived.

• As of April 23: over 2.6 million North Carolinians (2,620,443) were presumed to be recovered from Covid-19.
• Active cases comprised just 0.6% of NC's total case count.
• Active cases represented 0.1% of NC's population.
• Also, 98.5% of NC's total cases were recovered, no longer infectious, and represented people now with persistent, long-lasting, and robust natural immunity to Covid-19 - immunity that is stronger against Covid-19 and its variants than even that enjoyed by those who are fully vaccinated.
• Only 0.2% of people in NC had died with Covid-19.
• All things considered, about 99.9% of people in NC posed no threat of passing along Covid-19 to anyone.

    Immunity, protection, post-vaccination infections, and reinfections

    For the week ending April 23:

• At least 92.8% of all North Carolinians - 95.3% of adults - are estimated to have naturally acquired immunity or the protection of being fully vaccinated or both.
• Conversely, only about 1.5% of all North Carolinians - and 0.4% of adults - were estimated to have neither natural immunity nor any protection from at least one inoculation.
• There had been 540,346 post-vaccination infections among 6,051,907 fully vaccinated individuals, per the most recent update from DHHS (for the week ending April 9). These data have undergone significant revisions in the past few week.
• The estimated post-vaccination infection rate for the week ending April 9 was 8.9%.
• For the week ending April 9, DHHS reports 433,969 post-vaccination infections have occurred among the 2,957,256 who have received a full course of vaccination but not received boosters. Their estimated post-vaccination infection rate was 14.7%.
• For the week ending April 9, DHHS reports 106,377 post-vaccination infections have occurred among the 3,094,651 who have also received boosters. Their estimated post-vaccination infection rate was 3.4%.
• Also as of the week ending April 9, 59% of Covid-19 cases in North Carolina over the previous week were to people considered fully vaccinated: 27% for those with a full course of vaccination, and another 32% for those who had also received boosters.
• There had been 80,651 reinfections for those with prior lab-confirmed cases of Covid-19 as of the week ending April 9. These data have also undergone significant revision.
• The estimated reinfection rate for the week ending April 9 was 3.1%.