Emergency Preparedness and Response:
March 31, 2021 |
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All of Group 4 Eligible for Vaccination Today,
All Adults Eligible April 7
Governor Roy Cooper and North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) Secretary Mandy K. Cohen, M.D. announced beginning on March 31, people in Group 4 who are essential workers not yet vaccinated, will be eligible for vaccination. Group 5, which includes anyone ages 16 and up who wants to be vaccinated, will become eligible April 7.
Since March 17th, part of Group 4, adults with high-risk medical conditions and people living in close group settings, have been eligible. The accelerated timeline will allow the state and vaccine providers to continue to get vaccines into arms quickly and continue to reach underserved and historically marginalized populations.
“It has been encouraging to see that our community members are ready and willing to get vaccinated,” said Orange County Health Director Quintana Stewart. “We welcome this new timeline that will allow all groups to be able to get this safe and effective vaccine.”
The Orange County Health Department (OCHD) is ready for people in remaining groups to sign up to be vaccinated. To register with OCHD complete the Vaccine Interest Form (VIF) at https://redcap.link/OCHDvax or call (919) 913-8088. The phone line is operated daily from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Spanish and other languages available.
The Orange County Health Department is not the only place to get the vaccine. See a full list of vaccinators at myspot.nc.gov or call 888-892-1162.
Providers vaccinating in Orange County (note that the list is subject to change)
- Orange County Health Department ? Visit their Get Your Shot page to sign up or call 919-913-8088 between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. seven days a week.
- Greensboro Mass Vaccination Site ? Visit the Registration page or call 1-888-675-4567.
- UNC Health ? Visit the Get Vaccinated page or call 984-215-5485 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday-Friday.
- Piedmont Health Services ? Visit the COVID-19 Testing and Vaccination page or call 919-545-3452.
- Hillsborough Pharmacy ? Visit their Home Page or call 919-245-1212.
- Duke Health ? Visit the COVID-19 Vaccines Update page to join the waiting list. If you are a Duke MyChart user, you can check Duke MyChart regularly to view appointment availability.
- Cone Health ? Visit the COVID-19 Vaccine Information page to join the waiting list.
- Durham Veterans Affairs Health Care System ? Call 919-286-0411 and dial 0 for the operator to schedule an appointment if you are a veteran at high risk or a veteran frontline essential worker. The VA will reach out to more veterans as additional supplies become available. See the system’s website for more information. See the COVID-19 Vaccine for High Risk Veterans to see the listing of veterans eligible now for vaccination through the VA.
- Walgreens ? There are five Walgreens in Orange County that offer vaccines:
- 1670 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., Chapel Hill
- 1500 E. Franklin St., Chapel Hill
- 801 Mebane Oaks Rd., Mebane
- 1106 Environ Way, Chapel Hill
- 200 US Highway 70 E, Hillsborough
Related Links |
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WEAR A MASK.
Even if you’ve been fully vaccinated, everyone must still wear a mask when out in public.
LIMIT CLOSE CONTACT WITH OTHERS.
If you’re gathering with people you do not live with, stay at least 6 feet apart and wear a mask. If you are fully vaccinated, you can gather with other fully vaccinated people or with low-risk, unvaccinated people from one other household without masks.
STAY OUTDOORS.
When you gather with friends and family, stay outside and at least 6 feet apart.
DELAY YOUR TRAVEL.
If you must travel, get your COVID-19 vaccine (as available), get tested before traveling, wear a mask, and avoid crowded places.
GET TESTED.
If you travel, are around people who don’t live with you, or have symptoms, get tested before returning to work, school, or campus. It has never been easier to get tested for COVID-19. Find your testing place: ncdhhs.gov/TestingPlace
KEEP IT SMALL.
No gathering should be larger than 50 people indoors and 100 people outdoors.
WASH YOUR HANDS OFTEN OR USE HAND SANITIZER.
Avoid high-touch surfaces and shared items. When possible: use cashless payment options, avoid self-serve food/drink options, and use disposable food service items.
AVOID HIGH-RISK ACTIVITIES.
These include: indoor settings; places where people can’t socially distance; settings of increased respiratory activities like singing, yelling, laughing, or vigorous exercise; places where people have extended face-to-face conversations; and settings like bars, restaurants, and social gatherings where people remove their mask to eat or drink. If you think you have been exposed to COVID-19 or are experiencing symptoms, get tested! ncdhhs.gov/TestingPlace |
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When Will Children Be Vaccinated
Against COVID-19?
The US has ramped up its COVID-19 vaccination rollout for adults, but the vaccines have not yet been approved for children.
Questions abound as to why children are not yet eligible to be vaccinated and whether schools can safely reopen before kids receive their doses, so Stephanie Desmon spoke with Kawsar Talaat, who led one of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine trials in adults, to get some answers.
Takeaways from their conversation: - Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are in clinical trials for adolescents over 12, and we may have useful data on those trials within months.
- Separate trials for kids are necessary because their immune systems are more robust, so their dosing may be different.
- 70% to 85% of a population needs to be vaccinated to reach “herd immunity”—and we can only get to that level if kids and adolescents are vaccinated.
- With strict adherence to other public health measures, schools can open safely even before children are vaccinated.
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Free Daily COVID Testing
No-cost daily COVID testing is still available! Testing is an important tool to help prevent the spread of the virus throughout the community. We do not require a doctors note/referral, and we will test everyone with or without symptoms. People of all ages can be tested. We have interpreters on site and capacity to do virtual interpretation.
Weekday Testing Hillsborough
COVID-19 testing is available every weekday Monday through Friday from 9am to 5pm at Whitted Human Services Center at 300 W. Tryon St., Hillsborough NC 27278. Pre-registration is encouraged and may be done online. Select Orange County when registering:
https://unityphm.com/campaigns/starmed
There will be a few exceptions due to holidays, weather conditions, or other events. Please check our calendar below for testing dates.
Monday-Saturday Testing Chapel Hill
COVID-19 testing is available every weekday Monday through Saturday from 9am to 6pm at R7 Parking Lot at 725 MLK Blvd., Chapel Hill, NC 27514. Pre-registration is encouraged and may be done online:
https://lhi.care/covidtesting.
There will be a few exceptions due to holidays, weather conditions, or other events. Please check our calendar below for testing dates.
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‘A lot of differences’: Experts address health disparities among Asian American subgroups Sept. 28, 2020
PHOENIX – They’re often labeled the “model minority,” a misconception surrounding the nation’s 20 million Asian Americans that assumes financial stability, high levels of education and better health across the board.
But experts say that myth can mask higher rates of some chronic illnesses and hinder efforts to improve early detection and treatment of certain conditions.
Cronkite News spoke with experts across the U.S. about these health disparities, as well as efforts to overcome them and help Asian Americans get the health care they need. The responses offer a glimpse into some of the challenges facing this very diverse community – and what researchers are doing to identify and address those obstacles.
What should we know before discussing these health disparities?
Dr. Manasi Jayaprakash of the Asian Health Coalition in Chicago said one of the biggest challenges in identifying disparities among Asian Americans is that too often data and research focus on this demographic as a monolith.
“It’s very important for us to look at data by different subgroups: Koreans versus Vietnamese versus Chinese versus South Asians,” Jayaprakash said, “because that gives us a very different picture for health disparities.”
With cancer, for example, mortality rates overall in Asians are lower when compared with those of whites. But, Jayaprakash noted, “within the Asian group there are a lot of differences.”
Using grant funding, her organization partners with community groups on the ground to help bridge language and cultural barriers to “ensure representation of the different Asian subgroups in various facets of research.”
With more specific data, Jayaprakash said, organizations can develop “better, targeted approaches to addressing problems.”
A study published earlier this year in the American Journal of Public Health used California health data to assess disparities among Asian Americans and found that as an aggregate, Asians seemed healthier than whites. Each subgroup, however, had at least one identified disparity “disguised by aggregation.”
The Center for Asian Health at Temple University in Philadelphia is one of several entities nationwide working to identify and improve health disparities among Asian Americans. Federal statistics show Asian Americans are most at risk for cancer, heart disease, diabetes and conditions including hepatitis B and liver disease.
What are some of the largest health disparities among Asian Americans?
According to the federal Office of Minority Health, Asian Americans are most at risk for cancer, heart disease, diabetes and conditions including hepatitis B and liver disease. Cancer, in particular, stands out.
“Asian Americans have a lower incidence and mortality than non-Hispanic whites in all cancers combined but higher rates for certain cancers – especially liver and stomach cancer,” said Laura Makaroff, senior vice president for prevention and early detection at the American Cancer Society.
Among Asian Americans, Makaroff said, an estimated 1,700 men and 800 women will be diagnosed with liver cancer every year – about twice as many as whites.
Liver cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death among Asian American men and fifth for Asian American women, and the rates are “particularly elevated in Laotians, Vietnamese and Cambodians, likely due to recent immigration as well as a high prevalence of hepatitis B infection in their countries of origin,” Makaroff said.
Asian Americans also suffer from stomach cancer at rates twice as high as whites, with an estimated 980 men and 820 women diagnosed each year, Makaroff said. Stomach cancer is especially high in Koreans, largely due to a prevalence of H. pylori, a type of bacteria that can cause ulcers in the stomach lining or small intestine.
The good news is that stomach cancer rates overall have been declining, Makaroff said, thanks to such preventive steps as eating “more fresh fruits and vegetables, lower consumption of salt-preserved foods and a reduced prevalence of the H. pylori infection through improved sanitation and antibiotic treatment.”
What else can be done to help prevent these medical conditions?
Earlier testing and cancer screenings lead to treatments that could help reduce some of these disparities, the experts said, but they also noted that cancer screening rates are lowest among Asian Americans.
“There are a lot of preventable deaths that are happening in cancer because the screening among all the Asian groups is much lower … for breast cancer, cervical cancer, colorectal cancer – all of the cancers that have screenings associated with them,” Jayaprakash said.
Dr. Grace X. Ma, director of the Center for Asian Health at Temple University in Philadelphia, said culture may play a part in those lower screening rates.
“If you look at China and the people who are born there,” Ma said, “their screening guideline is very different from American cancer screening.”
For example, she said, women living in the U.S. are educated to get mammograms once they reach a certain age to help detect breast cancer, but in China, mammography is used for diagnoses rather than early detection or regular screening.
Although there are no recommended screenings for stomach or liver cancer, other steps could be taken to reduce cases in Asian Americans. Doctors can test for the H. pylori bacteria that can cause stomach cancer, and antibiotics can kill the bacteria if found early enough.
As for liver cancer, the most common risk factor is chronic infection with hepatitis B or C. There is a vaccine for hepatitis B, but there’s no cure once someone’s infected.Because of that, Yicklun Mo, who works with Jayaprakash at the Asian Health Coalition, stressed the importance of getting tested to know one’s status. It’s especially vital that pregnant women get tested because they can pass the infection to their babies at birth. If the mother’s infection is known, vaccinations can prevent her child from getting infected.
Mo called the hepatitis virus a silent killer.
“You don’t get tested, you never know,” he said, “so you can easily transmit it to your partners and also in childbirth.”
Through a grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Asian Health Coalition runs a program to increase screening and either vaccinations or appropriate care for hepatitis B.
With cancer screenings, Jayaprakash said rates among Asian Americans overall are at about 40%. The goal is to double that. “So we have a long way to go,” she said.
What are some other factors influencing these disparities?
There is no doubt that language barriers are an obstacle for Asian Americans seeking health care. The Office of Minority Health notes the percentage of persons 5 years or older who do not speak English very well varies among Asian American groups: 48.9% of Vietnamese, 44.8% of Chinese, 20.9% of Filipinos and 18.7% of Asian Indians are not fluent in English.
“There are many foreign-born Asian Americans that have limited English proficiency. So getting access to care oftentimes is quite challenging,” Ma said. “Especially now with COVID, if they’re not sick or having severe symptoms, they try to avoid it.
“We need to understand our population and the multifaceted barriers they’re facing. The solutions have to be culturally, linguistically appropriate.”
Stigma may also play a role, especially in seeking help for mental health conditions.
“A lot of Asian Americans also have mental illness, but they are three times less likely to seek treatment,” said Mo at the Asian Health Coalition. “There’s a lot of reasons behind that: Part of it stigma, part of it language issue, part of it they are not aware of some of the services.”
Makaroff said lifestyle choices also make a big difference in overcoming some of these disparities.
“Individual choices about maintaining a healthy body weight, staying physically active, eating a healthy diet, avoiding tobacco, limiting or avoiding alcohol – all super important,” she said.
“But it’s really important to recognize that not every individual has the same access to those kind of healthy choices. So community action, like policies and environments that support healthy lifestyles, are really critically important, too.”
Earlier testing and cancer screenings lead to treatments that could help reduce some of the disparities seen in Asian Americans, who, for example, suffer from stomach cancer at rates twice as high as whites, but experts note that cancer screening rates are lowest in this community.
What’s being done to make improvements?
Mo said the Asian Health Coalition has aimed to reduce such disparities for more than 20 years. The group works with some two dozen community-based organizations to develop and implement culturally and linguistically appropriate health initiatives.
“People in their own community, they speak their own language, they understand their culture,” Mo said, and so those grassroots groups help the coalition disseminate information.
“They also help us to implement the program, bring us data back and then we will be able to analyze it, be able to understand that this intervention really worked with this population, this intervention did not work so well.”
Whether these disparities carry over into the next generation of Asian American remains to be seen, said Ma at Temple. The next generation may be more integrated and assimilated into society, but “they also encounter many other disparities,” she said.
“They are still considered a minority. Oftentimes, they are encountering discrimination or prejudice, and that could cause stress and stress could cause a physical problem.”
Makaroff said culturally appropriate programs are vital to addressing all of this.
“To make a big difference and seriously impact and reduce health inequities in Asian American populations … we need to address language access, be culturally competent, really support and engage partnerships and collaborations, include communities and people in all of research, and really be responsive and accountable to all of the different Asian American communities that we serve,” she said.
“We need to begin and end with the community.” |
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Temporary Halt in Residential Evictions to Prevent the Further Spread of COVID-19
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky extended a declaration determining that the evictions of tenants could be detrimental to public health control measures to slow the spread of SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The announcement extends the moratorium, which was set to expire on March 31st, to continue until June 30th.
Click here for answers to frequently asked questions about the Order. |
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North Carolina COVID-19 Cases
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) reports 914,132 COVID-19 cases, 12,112 deaths, and 955 hospitalizations.
28.0% of North Carolina's population are at least partially vaccinated, and 17.6% are fully vaccinated.
There are currently 8,077 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 100 deaths in Orange County. 34.2% of Orange County residents are at least partially vaccinated, and 23.6% are fully vaccinated.
For more information regarding live updates (NCDHHS updates the site every day around noon), please visit the NCDHHS website.
Orange County Health Department also has a COVID-19 dashboard webpage, with information on COVID-19 data in the county.
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