<p>The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes a weekly map categorizing every county in the country as low, medium or high community level as it relates to COVID-19. Two-thirds of North Carolina are listed as ‘high.’ Medium is denoted in yellow and low is green.</p>

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes a weekly map categorizing every county in the country as low, medium or high community level as it relates to COVID-19. Two-thirds of North Carolina are listed as ‘high.’ Medium is denoted in yellow and low is green.

Two-thirds of the state’s counties, including Sampson County, are deemed as having a high risk of illness from COVID-19 and subsequent “strain on the health care system,” according to the Community Level ratings used by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At the end of last week, Sampson County health and government officials released the statistics via the COVID-19 Dashboard that showed Community Level was “high.” Local health officials urged residents to take proper precautions.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes a weekly map every Wednesday categorizing every county in the country as low, medium or high. The level is based on hospital beds in use, hospital admissions and new COVID-19 cases. In North Carolina, 67 of 100 counties are currently categorized as “high.”

“Orange is not our favorite color,” a message from the Sampson County Government Facebook page stated, alluding to the color-coded system used to identify transmission levels,orange being high. “Please be aware that out COVID case rates have escalated.”

In its message, the Sampson County Health Department urged residents to: Wear a mask indoors in public; stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines; and get tested if they have symptoms. Additional precautions may be needed for people at high risk for severe illness, health officials also warned.

After a peak in numbers seen at the beginning of 2022, reported COVID rates, cases and hospitalizations dipped in March and April. However, state numbers show that COVID rates have been steadily rising in recent months since those early spring lows.

Among the COVID-19 Dashboard numbers, it revealed that there have been 522 identified cases of COVID-19 in Sampson in the past two weeks

In Sampson County, there are 16,209 people who have been vaccinated with one booster or additional dose, or roughly 26% of the county population. That pales in comparison to the 59% of the vaccinated population across the state with at least one booster or additional dose, accordoing to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS).

Following a winter that saw weekly COVID cases in Sampson peak at 1,930 at the beginning of January, the numbers declined significantly. From the middle of March to the middle of May, the nunber of reported cases for a week’s time were never greater than 52, according to statistics that have tracked COVID cases since the outset of the pandemic in March 2022.

Those spring numbers this year have been on an upward trajectory, although nowhere near what Sampson and other counties, as well as the rest of the nation, saw during the worst of the pandemic. In the past three weeks where numbers are available, positive cases have ranged from 239 to 267, according to the NCDHHS. There were 355 positive cases the week ending July 30, 2022, according to the state agency.

There have been 189 deaths in Sampson attributed to the virus since the pandemic began, just one since the middle of April, according to the NCDHHS numbers.

Editor Chris Berendt can be reached at 910-592-8137 ext. 2587.