RALEIGH - With over 518,000 North Carolinians seeking unemployment benefits due to COVID-19, workers across the state are eager to see restrictions loosened when the current stay-at-home order twilights at the end of April.

But Gov. Roy Cooper cautioned in an April 15 press conference that reopening the economy will be less like flipping a "light switch" and more like using a "dimmer switch" to adjust restrictions incrementally.

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"As we slowly bring the lights back up, we have to monitor for troubling signs and spiking cases that can overwhelm our hospitals," he said.

Cooper identified three areas that will need to see major improvement before he considers easing restrictions — testing, tracing and trends.

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A need for more testing

North Carolina needs the supplies and lab capacity to do more diagnostic testing, as well as reliable antibody tests, in order to isolate and track new patients of COVID-19, the governor said.

Dr. Mandy Cohen, secretary of NC Department of Health and Human Services, said the state's testing infrastructure has improved considerably in the past month — more labs are processing tests, wait times are "drastically reduced," and the shortage of testing supplies has eased — "but we're not out of the woods yet."

Cohen and NCDHHS and the state's private industry partners are exploring at-home testing, which would reduce the need for limited personal protective equipment, and serological testing (popularly known as antibody or blood tests) to better understand the scope of asymptomatic infection.

Tracing the virus

Tracing is the "detective work" that public health experts use to identify people who might have been exposed when a new patient is identified.

"That requires a lot of people and a lot of legwork," Cooper said.

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Local health departments across the state currently employ about 250 trained professionals with experience in contact tracing, Cohen said.

"Going forward, it will take a much larger team," she said. The state is working to "ramp up" staffing and explore digital tracing technologies.

Monitoring trends

Cooper said public health officials closely monitoring trends in the number of new positive cases and patients hospitalized, as well as the available supply of personal protective equipment, hospital capacity and more.

Cohen highlighted the state's "enhanced COVID-19 surveillance tool," launched last week, as another vital data stream the state will be considering.

Private-sector data scientists continue to refine North Carolina-specific models of the infection's spread, mortality rates and the strain on hospital resources, she said.

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These tools will help officials determine when to "dial up or dial down our social distancing policies," Cohen said.

What will Cooper's 'new normal' look like?

"This virus is going to be with us until there's a vaccine, which may be a year or more away," Cooper said.

"A new normal can get us back to work, back to school, back to play — but in a new way for a while," he said.

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"In our new normal, you may see more people wearing masks, or having their temperature checked," Cooper said. "The only sporting events or concerts that you may be able to watch for a while will have no in-person crowd."

"I know the changes that we've all made in our lives seem to have happened very quickly," Cooper said. "It's important to understand that undoing those changes won't happen as fast to protect our health and long-term economic prosperity."

Elizabeth Anne Brown is the trending news reporter for the Citizen Times. Reach her at eabrown@citizentimes.com, or follow her on Twitter @eabrown18.

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